Another advantage of using CAD over traditional drafting is that the design can be drawn at its exact dimensions and then scaled for printing; where drafting on paper required most designs to be drawn at a scale to fit.

The workspace in AutoCAD is a grid system with the origin at (0,0) marked by the UCS icon (the intersection of the x and y line). The starting point of a design must be known so that all features can be drawn to scale. There are four methods to specify coordinate points in AutoCAD. To illustrate the differences, each approach below has been used to create a line that extends from (2,3) to (5,8) as shown to the right. Usually it is up to the drafter to choose which entry method they prefer; however, sometimes only one method will be viable based on available information so it is necessary to be familiar with all four techniques.