Getting Started

This chapter takes you from a fresh install to a finished, saved drawing.

Please do it rather than just read it. It is short, and it builds the three habits that the rest of the program depends on: type the length, let Ortho hold the direction, let the program close the shape for you.

Nothing here assumes you have used CAD before. Every new word is explained as it appears.

Installing

Download the installer for your platform from the download page and run it.

Pingendum 2D is a desktop application for Windows, macOS and Linux. It is not demanding on hardware — see the system requirements if you want the figures.

Once installed, the program checks for updates by itself and tells you when one is ready.

First launch: the Welcome tab

When Pingendum opens, you land on the Welcome tab.

Tabs here work like tabs in a web browser: each open drawing gets one, along the top of the window. The Welcome tab is always the first, and you cannot close it.

On it you will find:

• New Drawing, New from Template, Open and Import DXF — the ways to begin.
• Recent Drawings — a card with a small picture for each drawing you worked on lately. View all lists the rest. If you moved or deleted a drawing, it stops appearing here.

You can come back at any time with File ▸ Start Page.

Starting a drawing

Choose File ▸ New Drawing (Ctrl+N). A new, empty drawing opens in its own tab.

What you get. The new drawing starts from your default template — a saved set of starting choices. Out of the box that is Pingendum2D Standard: millimetres, scale 1:1, and a single layer called 0. (A layer is a named group for your drawing's contents; Working with Layers explains them. You do not need one yet.)

To start from a different template, use File ▸ New from Template, or set a new default in Preferences ▸ New Drawings.

What to expect on screen. The tab is called "Untitled 1", then "Untitled 2", and so on, until you save it and give it a real name. A small dot where the tab's close button normally sits means you have unsaved changes.

Everything is drawn at full size

This is the single most important habit in CAD, and it surprises most beginners.

You do not shrink a building to fit the screen or the page. A wall 4400 mm long is typed as 4400, even though no screen is four metres wide. The program simply shows you as much of it as fits, and you zoom in and out freely.

How big the drawing prints is a completely separate decision, made at the end — see Model Space and Sheets. Never scale your geometry to make it print smaller.

Finding your way around

The Pingendum Window names every part of the screen. Four of them matter right now:

• The tool palette, down the left — a button for every drawing and editing tool.
• The context bar, just above the drawing area — this is where the program talks to you. When something is running, it shows which command it is, what it wants from you next, and the choices available. Get into the habit of reading it.
• The status bar, along the bottom — the drafting aids (Ortho, Snap and friends), the scales, and the cursor's current position.
• Find a command, at the top right, or Ctrl+K — a search box that can start any command by name. It is the fastest way to run something when you cannot remember where it lives, and the lesson below uses it throughout.

A word about "commands". In Pingendum, almost everything you do is a command: Line is a command, Offset is a command, Save is a command. A command usually runs for a while and asks you for things — points, distances, objects — one step at a time, with the context bar telling you what it wants. That back-and-forth is how CAD works, and it feels natural after about ten minutes.

Your first drawing

You are going to draw a square wall: a square 200 across, with a second outline 20 inside it, meeting cleanly at the corners.

It uses three commands — Line, Offset and Fillet — and takes a couple of minutes. The video at the end is this exact drawing, start to finish, and the steps below follow it.

Before you start: turn on Ortho

Look at the status bar along the bottom of the window and find Ortho. If it is not already on, click it or press F8. A button that is on has an outline round it.

What Ortho is. Ortho is short for orthogonal, which just means "at right angles". With Ortho on, a line you draw can only run straight across or straight up and down — never at a slant.

Why it matters here. In this lesson you type every length, and Ortho supplies the direction. Point the cursor roughly upwards and the line goes exactly up; roughly right, and it goes exactly right. You get square corners without measuring any angles.

1. Start the Line command

Press Ctrl+K. A search box opens over the drawing.

Type l. The list narrows as you type, and Line is at the top — "Draws connected straight segments" — with the letter L beside it. Press Enter to run it.

What to expect. The cursor becomes a crosshair (a small cross) over the drawing area, and the context bar now reads Line · First point. The crosshair is how you know a drawing command is waiting for a point.

Two things worth knowing from this one step:

• Every command can be reached this way. Type a few letters of its name, press Enter. You never have to hunt for a button.
• The short code beside the name — L — is the command's alias. Once you know it, you can simply type L on the drawing and press Enter instead of opening the search box. The rest of this documentation writes commands that way: "Line — L". The tool palette on the left does the same job if you prefer clicking.

2. Put the first point on the origin

The context bar is asking for the first point, and it will accept a typed value.

Type 0,0 and press Enter.

What that did. 0,0 is the origin — the drawing's zero point, where the green vertical axis crosses the red horizontal one. Typing a point as x,y places it exactly, instead of wherever your hand happened to click. (Typing Coordinates and Values covers the other ways to type a point.)

What to expect. A dot appears at the origin, and the context bar changes to Line · Next point.

3. Draw three sides, typing each length

For every side, do it in this order: move the crosshair in the direction you want the line to go, then type the length.

The order matters. The number you type is only a distance — it has no direction of its own. The direction comes from where the crosshair is pointing at that moment. If you type a length without moving the crosshair first, the program has no direction to use.

1. Move the crosshair straight up from the origin. A guide follows it, showing 90.00°. Type 200 and press Enter.
2. Move the crosshair to the right. The guide now reads 0.00°. Type 200, Enter.
3. Move the crosshair straight down. Type 200, Enter.

What to expect. Each side appears as you confirm it, with its length and angle shown beside the cursor while you aim. You now have three sides of a square — up the left, across the top, down the right — still open along the bottom.

4. Close the square

Press C.

What Close does. It draws the last side straight back to your very first point and ends the command in one move, so you never have to aim that final edge or worry about landing exactly on the start.

What to expect. The bottom edge appears, and the context bar goes back to "Select objects, or choose a command". That message is how you know nothing is running — Pingendum is just waiting.

You now have a closed 200 × 200 square sitting on the origin.

5. Offset an inside outline 20 in

What Offset is. Offset makes a parallel copy of a line at a distance you choose — like tracing alongside it with a ruler held at a fixed width. It is how wall thicknesses, kerbs and borders get drawn.

1. Press Ctrl+K, type o, pick Offset — "Makes a parallel copy of an object at a distance" — and press Enter.
2. The context bar reads Offset · Object to offset. Type 20 and press Enter. That sets the distance, and it stays set for the whole command.
3. Click one side of the square. The prompt changes to Side to offset toward.
4. Click anywhere inside the square. A copy of that side appears 20 in from it.
5. Do the same for the other three sides: click the side, then click inside. The prompt alternates between Object to offset and Side to offset toward every time.

What to expect — and don't panic. Offset copies each line at its original length, so the four new lines run past each other at the corners instead of meeting neatly. That is correct behaviour, not a mistake. The next step tidies it.

6. Close the inside corners with Fillet

What Fillet is. Fillet joins two lines into a corner. Normally it rounds that corner to a radius you give it. Set the radius to 0 and the corner comes out sharp — and anything sticking out past it is cut off. That is exactly what those overshooting lines need.

1. Press Ctrl+K, type f, pick Fillet — "Rounds the corner between two objects" — and press Enter.
2. The context bar reads Fillet · First object. Type 0 and press Enter to set the radius to 0.
3. Click one inside line near a corner, then click the inside line next to it. The two snap together into a clean corner, and the overshoot disappears.
4. Repeat at the other three inside corners.

The one thing to get right: click each line on the part you want to keep — the stretch that forms the corner, not the bit hanging past it. Pingendum keeps the side you clicked.

When all four corners are closed, the drawing is done: an outer square with a second outline 20 inside it, meeting neatly all the way round.

If something goes wrong

Everything here is recoverable. Three keys cover almost every mishap:

Save your work

Choose File ▸ Save (Ctrl+S), give the drawing a name, and pick a folder.

Pingendum 2D drawings are saved as .pingdrw files. Once saved, the tab shows the drawing's name instead of "Untitled", and the unsaved-changes dot disappears.

What you just learned

• Find a command (Ctrl+K) starts anything by name — type a few letters, press Enter.
• Typing a point (0,0) places it exactly; typing a length (200) sets a distance in the direction the crosshair points.
• Ortho (F8) supplies that direction and keeps every line square.
• Close (C) finishes an outline back at its first point and ends the command.
• Offset copies a line at a set distance. Fillet at radius 0 closes a corner and trims the overshoot.
• Esc cancels, U takes back a point, Ctrl+Z undoes.

Notice what you did not do. You never told the program "these corners must be square". They are square because you drew them that way, with Ortho and typed lengths. That is what drafting rather than parametric sketching means in practice.

Where to go next

Tip: the application has a fuller guide built in

Help ▸ User Guide (F1) opens an offline guide with four complete lessons — a floor plan from start to finish, then layers and dimensions, then sheets and printing, then working with others — plus a page for every command.

Next Steps

Next: The Pingendum Window