The AutoCAD program window is divided into six parts:

Figure 1.1, shown earlier in this chapter, shows a typical layout of the AutoCAD program window. You can organize the AutoCAD window into any arrangement you want and save it as a workspace. You can save and recall a workspace at any time using the Workspace Switching tool in the status bar (you'll learn more about this tool in the next chapter). The default workspace in Figure 1.1 is called the 2D Drafting & Annotation workspace, which is one of two workspaces built into AutoCAD.

Figure 1.2 shows AutoCAD's 3D Modeling workspace, which has a different set of screen elements. Figure 1.2 also shows a standard AutoCAD drawing file with a few setting changes to give it a 3D appearance. Beneath these external changes, the underlying program is the same.

You'll learn more about workspaces later in this chapter and in Chapter 28.

Figure 1.2. The 3D Modeling workspace offers an alternative arrangement of the elements in the AutoCAD window.

In the upper-left corner of the AutoCAD program window, the red AutoCAD icon features the Application menu, which offers a set of options not directly related to drawing; I'll elaborate on this new menu in the next section, "Using the Application Menu." The Quick Access toolbar at the top of the drawing area (as shown in Figure 1.3) includes the basic file-handling functions that you find in nearly all Windows programs. The InfoCenter is AutoCAD's online help facility; you'll learn more about it in Chapter 2. The Ribbon provides nearly all the commands you'll need using icon tools; you'll learn more about the Ribbon in the section "Using the Ribbon" later in this chapter.

Figure 1.3. The Quick Access toolbar, featuring basic Windows file-handling functions, appears above the Ribbon.

The drawing area occupies most of the screen. Everything you draw appears in this area. As you move your mouse around, crosshairs appear to move within the drawing area. This is the drawing cursor that lets you point to locations in the drawing area. You'll get your first chance to work with the drawing area later in the section "Picking Points in the Drawing Area." You'll learn more about the UCS icon in a moment (see the section "Using the UCS Icon").

Just below the drawing area in the lower-right corner are the Model and Layout tabs. These tabs enable you to quickly switch between different types of views called the model and layout views. You'll get to see firsthand how these work in a section called "Working with AutoCAD" later in this chapter.

The Command window, located just below the drawing area, gives you feedback about AutoCAD's commands as you use them. You can move and resize this window just as you move and resize other display components. By default, the Command window is in its docked position, as shown in Figure 1.4. I'll elaborate on the Command window in the section "Working in the Command Window" later in this chapter.

Figure 1.4. The Command window and the status bar

Below the Command window is the status bar (also shown in Figure 1.4). The status bar gives you information at a glance about the state of the drawing. For example, the coordinate readout at the far left of the status bar tells you the location of your cursor. The tools in the status bar offer aids to the drafting process.

The Application menu offers tools to help you manage your AutoCAD files. It is basically the File pull-down menu from previous versions of AutoCAD. Try it out to see how it works firsthand:

Figure 1.5. The Export option in the Application menu showing the list of export options

The Application menu also gives you a convenient way to find recently used files or to get to a file you already have open. If you move your cursor away from the list of options to the left in the Application menu, you'll see Recent Documents in the upper right of the menu. You'll also see two icon tools named Open Documents and Recent Documents (see Figure 1.6).

The Open Documents option lets you quickly change from one open file to another when you are viewing your files full-screen. The Recent Documents option displays a list of documents you've recently worked on.

You can use the View tool in the upper-right portion of the Application menu to select the way the list of files is displayed in a manner similar to the way you would use the Windows Explorer View option. You can click this icon and select Medium Images to have the list display the files with thumbnail images of their content. Hover over a filename, and you will see a tool tip that displays a larger thumbnail of the drawing.

Figure 1.6. The Open Documents and Recent Document tools

The most prominent feature in the AutoCAD window, besides the drawing area, is the Ribbon (see Figure 1.7). This is where you'll be selecting tools to draw, edit, or perform other functions. The Ribbon contains a set of panels representing groups of tools and features. The name of each Ribbon panel is found in its title bar at the bottom of the panel. Ribbon panels are further organized by the tabs that appear above them. All of the tools in the Ribbon offer tool tips that provide a short description to help you understand what each tool icon represents.

Figure 1.7. A typical tool tip from a Ribbon panel tool

If you see only the Ribbon tabs, right-click one of the tabs and choose Minimize

Move the arrow cursor onto one of the Ribbon panel tools and leave it there for a moment; you'll see a tool tip appear just below the cursor. Hold the cursor there a bit longer and the tool tip changes to give you even more information about the tool.

In most cases, you'll be able to guess what each tool does by looking at its icon. The icon with an arc in the Draw Ribbon panel, for instance, indicates that the tool draws arcs; the one with the circle shows that the tool draws circles; and so on. For further clarification, the tool tip gives you the name of the tool.

As a new user, you'll find these tool tips helpful because they show you the name of the tool and a brief description of how to use it. Typically, when I ask you to select a tool, I'll use the name shown in the tool tip to help you identify the tool. In the case of a tool with flyouts, the tool name changes under different conditions. For those tools, I'll describe the tool using a general description. You'll learn more about flyouts a bit later in this chapter (see the section "Understanding Flyouts").

As you work through this book, I will ask you to select tools from the Ribbon panels. You'll often be asked to switch between different tabs to select tools from other sets of panels. To make the process simpler to read, I'll use a somewhat abbreviated description of a tools location. For example, to use the Line tool, I'll say, "Click the Line tool from the Home tab's Draw panel." To use the Move tool, I'll say, "Click the Move tool in the Home tab's Modify panel."

Expanding Panels

In addition to the visible tools, a few tools are hidden from view. You can expand many of the Ribbon panels to select more tools. If you see an arrowhead to the right of a panel's title bar, you can click the title bar to expand the panel (see Figure 1.8). The set of tools expands to reveal some additional tools. If you click in the drawing area, the expanded panel shrinks to its original size. As an alternative, you can click the pushpin icon in the expanded panel title bar to lock the panel in its open position.

Figure 1.8. The arrowhead in the panel title bar tells you that additional tools are available.

From now on, I'll refer to the location of additional tools as the "expanded panel." For example, I'll say, "Click the Ray tool in the expanded Draw panel" when I want you to select the Ray tool.

Understanding Flyouts

One more feature you'll want to know about are the flyouts. Flyouts are similar to the expanded panels because you can click an arrowhead to gain access to additional tools. Instead of a whole panel, however, flyouts give you access to different methods for using a particular tool. For example, AutoCAD lets you draw circles in several different ways, so it offers a flyout for the Circle tool in the Home tab's Draw panel. If you click the arrowhead next to the circle icon in the Draw panel, you'll see additional tools for drawing circles (see Figure 1.9).

Figure 1.9. Flyouts

If you select a tool option from a flyout, that option becomes the default tool for that icon. For example, if you hover your cursor over the circle icon in the Draw panel, you'll see that the tool tip shows "Center, Radius" for the tool's name. If you click the arrowhead next to the Center, Radius tool and select 2-Point, then 2-Point becomes the default tool and you'll see "2-Point" for the name of the tool in the tool tip (see Figure 1.10).

Figure 1.10. The tool with a flyout will change to the last tool used.

General Tool Names vs. Tool Tip Names

Since the tool tip names of tools with flyouts can change, describing them by name can be a bit problematic. The name may have changed based on the last tool you used from a flyout. For this reason, if a tool has a flyout, I'll refer to it by a general name that is related to the set of tools in a flyout rather than by the tool tip name. For example, I'll call the circle icon tool the Circle tool rather than the Center, Radius tool. Likewise, I'll refer to the magnifying glass icon in the View tab's Navigate panel as the Zoom tool instead of the Extents tool.

Tools vs. the Keyboard

Throughout this book, you'll be told to select tools from the Ribbon panels to invoke commands. For new and experienced users alike, the Ribbon panels offer an easy-to-remember method for accessing commands. If you're an experienced AutoCAD user, you can type commands directly from the keyboard. Most of the keyboard commands you know and love still work as they did before.

Another method for accessing commands is to use accelerator keys, which are special keystrokes that open and activate drop-down menu options. You may have noticed that the commands in the menu bar and the items in the drop-down menus all have an underlined character. By pressing the Alt key followed by the key corresponding to the underlined character, you activate that command or option without having to engage the mouse. For example, to choose Open from the Application menu, press Alt, then F, and then finally O (Alt+F+O).

Many tools and commands have aliases. Aliases are one-, two-, or three-letter abbreviations of a command name. As you become more proficient with AutoCAD, you may find these aliases helpful. As you work through this book, the shortcuts will be identified for your reference.

Finally, if you're feeling adventurous, you can create your own aliases and keyboard for executing commands by adding them to the AutoCAD support files. Chapter 28 discusses how to customize menus, Ribbon panels, toolbars, and keyboard shortcuts.

Now that you've seen the general layout of AutoCAD, take a look at the coordinate readout and the drawing cursor to get a sense of how the parts of the AutoCAD screen work together:

If you happen to click the right mouse button, a shortcut menu appears. A right-click frequently opens a menu containing options that are context sensitive. This means the contents of the shortcut menu depend on the location where you right-click as well as the command that is active at the time. If there are no appropriate options at the time of the right-click, AutoCAD treats the right-click as an

In the lower-left corner of the drawing area, you see an L-shaped arrow. This is the User Coordinate System (UCS) icon, which tells you your orientation in the drawing. This icon becomes helpful as you start to work with complex 2D drawings and 3D models. The X and Y arrows indicate the X- and Y-axes of your drawing. The little square at the base of the arrows tells you that you're in what is called the World Coordinate System (WCS). Chapter 22 discusses this icon in detail. For now, you can use it as a reference to tell you the direction of the axes.

if You Can't Find the UCS Icon

The UCS icon can be turned on and off, so if you're on someone else's system and you don't see the icon, don't panic. If you don't see the icon or it doesn't look as it does in this chapter, see Chapter 22 for more information.

As mentioned, at the bottom of the screen, just above the status bar, is a small horizontal window called the Command window. Here, AutoCAD displays responses to your input. By default, it shows two lines of text. The bottom line shows the current messages, and the top line shows messages that have scrolled by or, in some cases, components of the current message that don't fit in a single line. Right now, the bottom line displays the message Command (see Figure 1.4, earlier in this chapter). This prompt tells you that AutoCAD is waiting for your instructions. When you click a point in the drawing area, you see the message Specify opposite corner:. At the same time, the cursor starts to draw a window selection that disappears when you click another point. The same message appears in the Dynamic Input display at the cursor.

As a new user, pay special attention to messages displayed in the Command window and the Dynamic Input display because this is how AutoCAD communicates with you. Besides giving you messages, the Command window records your activity within AutoCAD. You can use the scroll bar to the right of the Command window to review previous messages. You can also enlarge the window for a better view. (Chapter 2 discusses these components in more detail.)

Now, let's look at AutoCAD's window components in detail.

In this exercise, you'll get a chance to see and use a typical Select File dialog box.

Before you start, make sure you have installed the sample files for this book from the DVD. See the introduction for instructions on how to find the sample files.

To start, you'll open an existing file:

The clip.dwg file opens to display a layout view of the drawing. A layout is a type of view in which you lay out different views of your drawing in preparation for printing. You can tell you are in a layout view by the white area over the gray background. This white area represents your drawing on a printed page. This view is like a print preview.

Also note that the AutoCAD window's title bar displays the name of the drawing. This offers easy identification of the file.

This particular file contains both 2D drawings and a 3D model of a typical locking clip. The Layout view shows a top, front, and right-side view as well as an isometric view.

Figure 1.12. The Layout1 view of the clip.dwg file

One of the most frequently used commands is Zoom, which gives you a closer look at part of your drawing. This command offers a variety of ways to control your view. In this section, you'll enlarge a portion of the clip drawing to get a more detailed look. To tell AutoCAD which area you want to enlarge, you use what is called a zoom window.

You'll start by switching to a Model Space view of the drawing. The Model Space view places you in a workspace where you do most of your drawing creation and editing. Follow these steps:

In this exercise, you used the Window option of the Zoom command to define an area to enlarge for your close-up view. You saw how AutoCAD prompts you to indicate first one corner of the window selection and then the other. These messages are helpful for first-time users of AutoCAD. You'll use the Window option frequently—not just to define views but also to select objects for editing.

Getting a close-up view of your drawing is crucial to working accurately, but you'll often want to return to a previous view to get the overall picture. To do so, choose Previous from the Zoom flyout in the View tab's Navigate panel.

Do this now and the previous view—the one showing the entire clip—returns to the screen.

You can quickly enlarge or reduce your view by using the Zoom Realtime option of the Zoom command. Follow these steps to change your view with Zoom Realtime:

Figure 1.15. The final view you want to achieve in step 3 of the exercise

If you prefer, you can use the wheel on your mouse to zoom and pan over your view. Roll the wheel to zoom in and out or click and drag the wheel to pan.

As you can see from this exercise, you have a wide range of options for viewing your drawings, just by using a few tools. These tools are all you need to control the display of 2D drawings.

It's a good idea to save your file periodically as you work on it. As with any Windows program, you can save it under its original name (click the Save tool on the Quick Access toolbar) or under a different name (choose Save As from the Application menu), thereby creating a new file.

By default, AutoCAD automatically saves your work at 10-minute intervals under a name that is a combination of the current filename plus a number and that ends with the .sv$ filename extension; this is known as the Automatic Save feature. Using settings in the Options dialog box or system variables, you can change the name of the autosaved file and control the time between autosaves. See "The Open and Save Tab" in Appendix B for details.

You'll frequently make changes to your drawings. One of AutoCAD's primary advantages is the ease with which you can make changes. The following exercise shows you a typical sequence of operations involved in changing a drawing:

Real World Scenario: "I Can't Find My Automatic Saves!"

As an IT manager at ELS Architecture and Urban Planning, one of the most common questions I get is "Where does AutoCAD put the Automatic Save files?" By default, in Windows XP, the Automatic Save file is stored in C:Documents and SettingsUser NameLocal SettingsTemp. You can find the exact location for your system by typing Savefilepath

In this exercise, first you issued the Erase command, and then you selected an object by using a pickbox to click it. The pickbox tells you that you must select items on the screen, and it shows you what you're about to select by highlighting objects as you hover the cursor over them. Once you've clicked an object or a set of objects, press

You can also click an object or a set of objects and then press the Delete key.

Figure 1.16. Erasing a portion of the clip

You can have multiple documents open at the same time in AutoCAD. This can be especially helpful if you want to exchange parts of drawings between files or if you want another file open for reference. Try the following exercise to see how multiple documents work in AutoCAD:

When you create a new file in AutoCAD, you're actually opening a copy of a template file, as you saw in step 1. A template file is a blank file that is set up for specific drawing types. The acad.dwt file is a generic template set up for Imperial measurements. Another template file called acadiso.dwt is a generic template useful for metric measurements. Other templates are set up for specific drawing-sheet sizes and measurement systems. You'll learn more about templates in Chapter 6.

Next, let's try drawing a rectangle to see how AutoCAD behaves while drawing objects:

Note that you've had two files open at once. You can have as many files open as you want as long as your computer has adequate memory to accommodate them. You can control the individual document windows as you would any window, using the Window drop-down menu or the window control buttons in the upper-right corner of the document window.

In the preceding exercise, you saw how you can easily copy an object from one file to another by using the standard Windows Cut and Paste feature. AutoCAD offers several tool palettes that enable you to click and drag predrawn objects into your drawing.

You can open the tool palettes by clicking the Tool Palettes tool in the View tab's Palettes panel.

Once the tool palettes are open, you can select a tab in the Tool Palettes window containing the predrawn objects you want to use and then click the specific object you want to add. The object appears at the cursor, ready for you to select a location (see Figure 1.21).

In addition to predrawn objects, the tool palettes offer a way to add hatch patterns and other components quickly to your drawing. They're great tools to help you manage your library of custom, predrawn symbols. Chapter 29 shows you how to use and customize the tool palettes.

Figure 1.21. The tool palettes offer predrawn symbols that you can easily place in your drawings.