AutoCAD Basics - Section 1

CHAPTER 2: THE ELEMENTS OF THE INTERFACE

The program interface, as it is after it is installed, has the following elements, listed from top to bottom: The application menu, the quick access toolbar, the ribbon, the drawing area, the toolbar state and some additional elements such as the navigation bar in the drawing area and the command window. Each one, in turn, with its own elements and particularities.

Those who use the Microsoft Office 2007 or 2010 package know that this interface is very similar to programs like Word, Excel and Access. In fact, the interface of Autocad is inspired by the Microsoft Options Ribbon and the same goes for elements such as the application menu and the tabs that divide and organize the commands.

Let's see each one of the elements that make up the Autocad interface carefully.

2.1 The application menu

As mentioned in the previous video, the application menu is the button represented by the icon of the program itself. Its main function is to open, save and/or publish the drawing files, although it has some additional functions integrated. It includes a text box that will allow you to explore and locate program commands quickly and with a definition of it. For example, if you type “polyline” or “shading” you get not only the specific command (if any according to your search), but also related ones.

It is also an excellent drawing file browser, since it is able to present icons with preliminary views of them, both those that are open in their current drawing session, and those that have been recently opened.

It should be added that the application menu gives access to the “Options” dialog box that we will use on more than one occasion throughout this text, but especially in section 2.12 of this same chapter for reasons that will be explained there.

2.2 Quick Access Toolbar

Next to the “Application Menu” we can see the Quick Access Bar. It has a workspace switcher, a topic that we will refer to in a particular way shortly. In it we also have buttons with some common commands, such as creating a new drawing, opening, saving and printing (tracing). We can customize this bar by removing or adding any program command. What I don't recommend is that you do without the very useful undo and redo buttons.

To customize the bar, we use the drop-down menu that appears with the last control to its right. As you can see in the video in this section, it is easy to disable some commands present in the bar or activate some others that are suggested in the listing. For its part, we can add any other command using the option More commands ... from that same menu, which opens a dialog box with all available commands and from which we can drag them to the bar.

It is important to note that in this menu there is an option that we can eventually use throughout the text. This is the Show menu bar option. By doing so, the full command menu used in 2008 and previous versions is activated, so that users accustomed to it can either dispense with the ribbon, or make a less painful transition to it. If you used a version of Autocad before 2009, you can then activate this menu and find the commands where it used to be. If you are a new user of Autocad, the ideal is to adapt to the ribbon.

Therefore, allow me to advance an idea that we will reiterate (and explain more extensively) on several occasions throughout the text. Access to the Autocad commands that we will study in this course can be done in four different ways:

Through the Ribbon Options

Using the “classic” menu bar (to call it something) that is activated in the way shown in the video.

Writing the commands in the command window as we will study later.

Clicking a button on the floating toolbars will also see you very soon.

2.3 The Ribbon

We have already mentioned that the Autocad ribbon is inspired by the interface of the Microsoft Office programs 2007 and 2010. From my point of view it is an amalgam between traditional menus and toolbars. Its result is the reorganization of the commands of the program in a bar organized into chips and these in turn divided into groups or sections.

The title bar of each group, at the bottom of it, usually includes a small triangle that when pressed expands the group showing commands that until that time were hidden. The thumbtack that appears allows you to fix them on the screen. In some cases, you can find, in addition to the triangle, a dialog box trigger (arrow-shaped), depending on the group in question.

Needless to say, the ribbon is also customizable and we can add or remove sections from it, but we'll cover that in the “Interface Customization” topic in section 2.12 below.

What you might find useful, to gain more space in the drawing area, is the option to minimize the tape by hiding the commands and leaving only the tab names or showing only the tab names and their groups. A third variant shows the tab names and the first button in each group. These options are shown in the following video, as well as the possibility of also converting the command tape into a floating panel over the interface. However, in my humble opinion, none of the above changes have any real practical meaning, although it is finally necessary to revise it as part of the interface study. What I find quite appealing, on the other hand, are the onscreen aids related to the ribbon. If you keep the mouse cursor on a command, without pressing it, not only appears a window with descriptive text of the same, but even with a graphic example of its use.

Let's see examples of the above in the following video.

2.4 The drawing area

The drawing area occupies most of the Autocad interface. This is where we create the objects that will make up our drawings or designs and also contains elements that we must know. In the lower part we have the area of ​​presentation tabs. Each of them opens a new space towards the same design to create different presentations for publication. This will be the subject of the chapter dedicated to the publication of drawings. On the right, we have three tools that serve to arrange the drawings in different views for their development. These tools are: ViewCube, the Navigation Bar and another that is derived from it and that may be floating in the drawing area, called SteeringWheel.

It is obvious that the color scheme of the drawing area can be customized as we will see later.

2.5 The command line window

Below the drawing area we have the Autocad command line window. Understanding how it interacts with the rest of the program is very important for its use. When we press a button on the ribbon, what we are really doing is giving the program an order to perform some action. We are indicating a command, either to draw or to modify an object on the screen. That happens with any computer program, but in the case of Autocad, in addition, this is immediately reflected in the command line window.

The command line window allows us to interact even more with the commands that we use in Autocad, since almost always we must choose between later options and / or indicate values ​​of length, coordinates or angles.

As we saw in the previous video, we press the button of the ribbon that serves to draw a circle, reason why the window of command line responds requesting the center of the circle, or that we choose an alternative method to draw it.

This means that Autocad expects us to indicate the coordinates of the center of the circle, or to draw said circle based on other values: “3P” (3 points), “2P” (2 points) or “Ttr” (2 points tangent and a radius) (when we look at geometry of objects, we will see how a circle is constructed with such values). Suppose we want to use the default method, that is, indicating the center of the circle. Since we haven't said anything about the coordinates yet, let's settle for clicking with the left mouse button at any point on the screen, that point will be the center of the circle. By doing so, the command window will now give us the following response:

The value that we write in the command line window will be the radius of the circle. What if we want to use diameter instead of radius? Then it will be necessary for us to tell Autocad that we are going to indicate a diameter value. To do this, write a “D” and press “ENTER”, the “Command window” will change the message, now requesting the diameter.

If you captured a value, that would be the diameter of the circle. The reader surely realized that the circle was drawn on the screen as we moved the mouse with the drawing area and even that any other click would have drawn the circle regardless of whether we captured any value or parameter in the command line window. However, the important thing to note here is that the command line window allows two things: a) choose a specific procedure to construct the object, in this example a circle based on its center and its diameter and; b) give values ​​for that object to have exact measurements.

Therefore, the command line window is the means that allows us to choose procedures (or options) to construct objects and indicate the exact values ​​of them.

Note that window option lists are always enclosed in square brackets and are separated from each other by a slash. To choose an option we must type the capital letter (or letters) in the command line. As the letter "D" to choose "Diameter" in the example above.

During all our work with Autocad, the interaction with the command line window is essential, as we had announced at the beginning of this section; will help us to always know what is the information requirement of the program to comply with the command, as well as the mechanism by which, in turn, we can have information on the actions that the program and the drawing objects are executing involved Let's see an example of the latter.

Subject to further study, let's choose the “Start-Properties-List” button. In the "command line" window we can read that we are being asked for the object "to list". Let's choose the circle from the previous example, then we must press “ENTER” to finish the selection of objects. The result is a text window with information related to the chosen object, like the following:

This window is actually an extension of the command window and we can activate or deactivate it with the “F2” key.

As the reader has probably already realized, if pressing a button on the ribbon activates a command whose name is reflected in the command line window, that means that we can also execute the same commands by typing them directly in the command line window. As an example, we can type “circle” on the command line and then press “ENTER”.

As can be seen, the answer is the same as if we had pressed the “Circle” button in the “Drawing” group of the “Home” tab.

In short, we can say that even if you prefer to execute all the commands of the program through the ribbon, you can not stop observing the command line window to know the options later. There are even a few commands that are not available on the ribbon or in the menu of previous versions and whose execution must necessarily be done through this window, as we will see in due course.