Book excerpt: Principles and Practices An Integrated Approach to Engineering Graphics and AutoCAD 2020 combines an introduction to AutoCAD 2020 with a comprehensive coverage of engineering graphics principles. By adopting this textbook, you will no longer need to adopt separate CAD and engineering graphics books for your course. Not only will this unified approach give your course a smoother flow, your students will also save money on their textbooks. What's more, the tutorial exercises in this text have been expanded to cover the performance tasks found on the AutoCAD 2020 Certified User Examination. The primary goal of Principles and Practices An Integrated Approach to Engineering Graphics and AutoCAD 2020 is to introduce the aspects of engineering graphics with the use of modern Computer Aided Design/Drafting software - AutoCAD 2020. This text is intended to be used as a training guide for students and professionals. The chapters in the text proceed in a pedagogical fashion to guide you from constructing basic shapes to making complete sets of engineering drawings. This text takes a hands-on, exercise-intensive approach to all the important concepts of Engineering Graphics, as well as in depth discussions of CAD techniques. This textbook contains a series of thirteen chapters, with detailed step-by-step tutorial-style lessons designed to introduce beginning CAD users to the graphic language used in all branches of technical industry. The CAD techniques and concepts discussed in the text are also designed to serve as the foundation to the more advanced parametric feature-based CAD packages, such as Autodesk Inventor. After completing this text your students will be prepared to pass the AutoCAD Certified User Examination. Certified User Reference Guides located at the front of the book and in each chapter show where these performance tasks are covered.