Cad monkey training 101

I can figure out how to use most tech-y things simply because they've become a part of every day life. So my parent's ineptitude with all things tech-y (cell phones, digital camera, i pods...) can bother the living crap out of me. And I love my parent's, I adore them, and I'm never going to leave as long as they keep feeding me. But sometimes they can be exasperating, like all parents are prone to be.
My father got it into his head he needed to learn autocad to remodel the basement. And since I did go to design school, and have autocad on my computer, I volunteered to do some simple drawings real quick, no prob. But he wanted to do it by himself, and I had to teach him. After a good deal of badgering, I agreed to educate him on the ways of a cad-monkey. So we do a rough floor plan sketch, record the measurements to the corresponding walls, (which was an argument unto itself. I insisted on writing the measurements down because "neither one of us will remember them all and I'm not traipsing up and down the stairs every single time you need to verify something dad. Write down the damn 12'-3"), and set up a brand new spanking cad document for the basement.
Now I know how difficult it can be to learn a new computer program, and I tried to be patient. Really really tried. But, well, just keep reading.
Me: Start here (pointing to paper drawing) in the corner of the basement.
Dad: Why isn't there a corner on the screen?
Me: because you haven't drawn it in the computer yet.
Dad: But I have it on paper here.
Me: Yes, but you have to draft all the lines that are on that physical sheet of paper into the computer if you want to be on the computer screen. It's like an empty word document, you have to use the key board to make the words visible. Only that's text and we're doing pictures.
Dad: Oh ok.
Me: So, this corner. Click that icon, it's your line command. Now click on the screen where you want the line to start. No it doesn't mater where. Move your mouse the direction you want the line to go (so far so good). Ok that wall is 12'-3", so type that in.
Dad: No I want the line to stop here (pressing fingertip to laptop screen and it changes color like my face), that looks right.
Me: But dad, it's not actually right, you can't just arbitrarily stop lines where you want them to if you want an accurate drawing of the basement.
Dad: Oh, ok. (furrows brow) Wait, start over. What command did we just use?
It took 15 minutes to draw that line (correctly), and for every other line, the above dialogue was repeated. I made the mistake of zooming once, and all hell broke loose. But eventually he had drawn a floor plan all by himself (kinda). Victory! And then:
Dad: But this is what the basement looks like now.
Me: yes...
Dad: But I don't need that. I want to see what it will look like.
Me: What, huh? Well, ok...what do you want it to look like?
Dad shrugs.
Me: So in autocad, you want to see something, that you have no idea what that something should look like in the first place. And you want to draw the something that you don't know what it looks like, in a program that you don't know how to draw in.
Dad nods.
I just walked away.