Exploring the user interface

- In this video, we will tour AutoCAD 2016's user interface. When you first start the program, you come to the Start tab and in the middle you'll see a list of recent documents. On the right, there's a notifications area which you can scroll down for more information. Down below there's a connect area. If you click this icon, you can log into A360 where you can store drawings in the cloud. Down below there is a Learn page which contains a list of videos which ship with the program.

I'll go back to Create, and over here on the left you can choose a template to begin drawing, or you can just begin drawing from scratch by clicking this button. And that's what I'll do. This launches the full user interface. At the top we have what is called the Application menu. Click to open and move the cursor over these items without clicking and you'll see that they automatically change. And you have items you can choose over here on the right.

There's a Search bar up here where you can type in command names. So for example, let's say you've heard of the command Fillet, but you don't know where it is in the interface. This will give you information about where to find it. There are actually two different versions of Fillet. One's a 2D version and there's a 3D version down here. So for example, let's say I want to find this command in the interface. It's on ribbon tab Home, the Modify panel, and it's in a Chamfer and Fillet dropdown.

Let's see if we can find that. This is the ribbon tab Home. This is the Modify panel, and this is the Fillet and Chamfer dropdown. If you hold the cursor over a command, you'll see its Tool Tip which gives you more information. Some panels can be expanded like this one and you can see that with a downward-facing arrow. That means there are more commands available each one with its own Tool Tip.

There are many tabs on the ribbon, and some of them have dropdowns, and you can just go through here and examine how some of the content is organized. You can also rearrange the ribbon using workspaces. Go down here and click this icon and choose the 3D Basics workspace. That changes the content of the ribbon. Everything is a bit different now.

The idea here is that the tools relevant to 3D modeling are filled into the ribbon. When you want to go back to drafting, you just select the Drafting and Annotation workspace. Notice though when I do that, it opens up this floating palette called Design Feed. Let's close that for now. Continuing on with our tour, this top area is called the Quick Access toolbar and it has common commands such as New, Open, Save, Save As, Plot, Undo, and Redo, and you can add or subtract items from this menu using this dropdown.

Say I want to add workspace to the list. That will give me this dropdown menu which allows me to change workspaces up here as well. Here you can type in command names or phrases to search for them in AutoCAD's Help system. Over here this shows my user account on A360. This is how you can access apps that work within AutoCAD to extend the functionality of the program. Over here you can access Autodesk's online community, and this is a link to the Help system.

Of course, over here we have the standard Windows controls for the entire application, and a corresponding set of Windows controls for the current drawing. This whole area is called the Drawing Window. This element is called the View Cube and it helps you navigate in three-dimensional space. The Navigation bar contains a list of common navigation commands that are used both in 2D and in 3D work. These are the In-canvas controls and there are actually menus.

You can open them just by clicking on the word. You can also right-click to open the Context menu, and the information that's displayed in this menu depends upon the context in which you are clicking. So if I right-click up here, I'm gonna get a different menu. If I right-click here, I'm gonna get a different menu, you see? It's context sensitive. This is called the User Coordinate System icon.

I clicked it and now I'm going to press Escape to deselect. This is called the command line. If I type in a command such as Fillet, you'll see that auto-complete will sort through an alphabetical list of commands which can save me a few letters of typing. I can click on this to execute the command, and now it's running on the command line. You see the prompt here and some options. I don't want to dive in too far in this first video so let's cancel out by pressing Escape.

Down here we have Model and Layout tabs. I'll click on layout one to go to this virtual sheet of paper which is where I would lay out the drawing for plotting. You can also hover the cursor over the File tab to go to the different layouts or to go back to Model space. Alternatively, you can just click these tabs down below. They do the same thing. Finally, over here in the lower right of the interface, you'll find the Status bar toggles. They're on when they're blue and off when they're gray.

And each Status bar toggle has its own menu. You can access that by right-clicking. This goes to a dialog box. This one opens up a menu instead. Each one is different. You can also add or subtract items from this menu by using this right-most button called Customization. Here you can add, let's say, Lineweight, and you see that when I toggle that on and off, it's adding this element right here that allows me to show or hide the Lineweight.

I'll just turn that off again. This completes our tour of AutoCAD 2016's user interface.