Autocad Tutorial 14: Project Two - Creating a Soft-drink Cup

AutoCAD Tutorial 14: Project Two - Modelling a soft-drink cup

This is the second project in my AutoCAD tutorial series. This time we will be making something more simple using new time-saving tools.

We are going to make a soft-drink cup with a rounded lid (so it doesn't look too plain). The cup will consist of 3 parts, the cup base, the lid and lastly, the straw. Here are some rough dimensions I quickly drew in paint:

With that in mind, let's get started. I'm going to start on the base of the cup. Open up AutoCAD and using the 2D circle tool, click and create a circle anywhere in the AutoCAD drawing window and input 5 for the radius (since radius is half the size of diameter) and press ENTER:

Now select the 2D line tool and click at the centre of the newly created circle to start off a line:

Now it gets a bit tricky. For the height, input 12.5 but DO NOT press enter or click:

Now press the TAB key to adjust the angle of the line. Now look closely, HOLD down SHIFT and move the mouse so that the line appears to be standing up. NOTE: Look for the +Z, if you can see it you know you got it right. When you are happy finalize it by clicking:

Now you have a line going up from the centre of the circle. This line will be used as a drawing aid. (Press ESCAPE to stop the 2D line tool if you already haven't). Now select the 2D circle tool again, this time clicking at the end of the 2D line you just created (the snaps should automatically highlight the end in red):

For the radius of the circle, input 6.5 and press ENTER:

So far you should have something that looks like this:

Select the LOFT tool by clicking on it at the 3D make panel OR by typing “_loft” and pressing ENTER:

This tool in short, creates surfaces between 2 or more cross sections; it's sort of a “filler” tool. Anyways with the loft tool selected, first click on the base of the cup (the bottom 2D circle) and then click on the top of the cup (the top 2D circle):

Press ENTER and you will see this:

Press ENTER again and a settings window will appear. Make sure “Ruled” is selected and press OK:

Now we have our cup base:

With that done, we are going to make the cup lid. Now move away from the cup by using the pan tool (don't move away too far, we just need some space to work with). Now select the 2D circle tool again and draw a circle with a radius of 7 and press ENTER:

We are going to draw another vertical 2D line, so select the 2D line and click at the centre of the circle:

This time, for the length of the line, input 4:

Press TAB, hold shift and move the mouse until the line looks upright and you can see the “+Z” then click to finalize your line:

Press ESCAPE to de-activate the line tool. Activate the 2D circle tool and draw a circle on top of the line we just created, for the radius, input 5 and press ENTER:

Now, activate the loft tool again. Click the 2 2D circles we just created:

Now press ENTER and then select “Cross-sections only”:

Now the loft settings screen will once again come up. Change the settings to match the picture below:

Press OK and you should have something similar to this:

Activate the cylinder tool. Move your mouse to the endpoint of the 2D line we created before we lofted the circles and click there:

For the radius, input 4 and press ENTER:

For the height go down, we want the cylinder to pass through the lofted object because we are going to subtract that. The height doesn't matter, as long as it passes through the lofted object:

Activate the subtraction tool. First select the lofted object FIRST and press ENTER. Then select the cylinder we just made and press ENTER. You should be left with this:

Great! That's the second piece done, time for the last. Move away from the cup lid to give ourselves some room to work with. Activate the Polyline tool by clicking on it OR by typing “_pline”:

Firstly, click anywhere (not too far away from the cup lid) to create a starting point. For the second point, input 20 and press TAB and for the angle, input 90. Press ENTER:

Like the 2D line tool, we can continue and draw another line. For the length of the next line, input 5 and press TAB and for the angle, input 60 (since 180 - 60 = 120), once done, press ENTER: