The purpose of this exercise is to design and plot out on the LaserJet printer a composition of famous and perhaps not-so-famous architecturally related quotations which you dig up somewhere or which you crib from the quotes placed around the studio.

The exercise will contain nothing but various styles of text. You will create ten or twelve different styles using the fonts supplied with AutoCAD. Some of the text should be drawn using left justification, some using right justification, some using center or middle justification, some drawn in a circle, some drawn with the DTEXT ("Dynamic Text") command and some with the MTEXT (Multi-line text) command. To draw text in a circle or an arc, draw one letter (probably an "A") and array it using the Polar array method around a center point. Then using the DDEDIT command, change each letter to the one you need at that location. Because letters are different widths, you may need to adjust the rotation of certain letters after you have changed them. Thus, you will need to keep the location of the center point of the polar array so that you can use that point as the base point for rotation command.

You should also experiment in using the Fit and Align justification methods, and assign different widths to several styles to see how that affects things. All in all this is one heck of an exercise, which will test your creative skills and is should be a welcome break from the dry "by-the-numbers" approach which the other exercises use.

1. Boot the computer.
2. Start up AutoCAD by double-clicking on its icon on the Windows Desktop.
3. Start a new drawing using the Triton B template file.
4. You should notice that this new drawing is called "drawing1.dwg" (as usual - AutoCAD is consistent in naming all new drawings by this name). It will have all the characteristics of the template file, complete with all of its layers and viewports. That is the purpose of template files. Now save this drawing file to a new name, which will be today's date in digits year, month and day of the month with the letters EX2 after it, such as "2006 02 04 EX2." Select the "Save" button on the toolbar to do this (save it in your folder, of course). Note that you do not have to designate a filename extension for the name. AutoCAD will automatically append the ".dwg" filename extension.
5. Make the layer A-ANNO-NOTE current.
6. Create several STYLES of text and draw the text in a very beautiful composition. Unity in Variety are important aspects of the composition. Experiment with changing colors of certain lines of text, by using the "Modify" "Properties..." command.
7. Click on the "Layout1" tab at the bottom of the drawing and then on the word "Paper" in the status bar at the bottom of the screen. You will see the crosshairs within the viewport.
8. Zoom to extents by double-clicking the mouse wheel, then zoom to .8x.
9. Switch to pure Paper Space by clicking on the work "Model" in the status bar at the bottom of the screen (not the "Model" tab).
10. Save the drawing: Click on the "Save" icon on the Toolbar (the one that looks like a floppy disk). Since you originally gave this drawing the name 2006 02 04 EX2.dwg when you first created it, it will be automatically saved to that name again when you pick the "Save" button without any further input from you. (AutoCAD calls this process a "Quick Save.")
11. Plot this drawing using the ColorPro printer. Change the properties in the plot dialogue box for the printer device to show the HP ColorPro printer and ledger size paper.  Plot the drawing in Paper Space at a scale of 1=1 using the Acad.stb Plot Style Table. 
12. When plotting is finished, if you are satisfied that everything is OK, close (exit) AutoCAD, by clicking on the X in the upper right corner of its window. You will now be back on the Windows desktop.
13. Copy the drawing from the network drive to your own USB drive by using the Windows My Computer (right-click Copy and Paste).  This way you will have two copies of every file you create - one on the Network Drive and one on your own portable USB drive.