From the course: Learning AutoCAD for Mac 2020

Components of the interface - AutoCAD for Mac Tutorial

From the course: Learning AutoCAD for Mac 2020

Start my 1-month free trial

Components of the interface

“

- [Narrator] Now that we have the application fired up, let's take a quick look around the interface. AutoCAD for Mac is laid out using three main component types: the menu bar across the top, palettes to the left and right of the screen, and the drawing window in the center. The menu bar is ubiquitous as it is in any application running on Mac OS. The apple is ever-present and never really changes. Next is the application menu, also fairly unchanging except for the application name itself. Here we find information about AutoCAD for Mac, our preferences, and the menu item to quit the application. Moving left to right, you'll find fairly standard menu items. File, edit, view, insert, format, tools, draw, dimension, modify, window, and the help menu. These are pretty straightforward and to navigate them, you must ask yourself simply what are you trying to accomplish? Are you looking for a tool to draw an arc, well, let's look under draw, and there we are. Are you looking to dimension that arc, well, let's go over to the dimension, and look down till we find the appropriate tool. Next, on the left and right edges of the screen, we see palettes. These are docked windows that hold buttons, lists, and drop-downs. These are pretty standard, and the default arrangement when you install the application includes the properties inspector palette, the layers palette, and the tool sets here on the left. Behind the layers and the properties palette we have two additional tabs, one for the reference manager, and one for inserting blocks. Along the bottom of the screen we find the status bar, the layout tabs, and the command line. For those not familiar, the command line is fairly unique to AutoCAD, and one many AutoCAD users have come to rely on. It's sort of like a DOS command prompt, or a terminal window for entering your commands, but it's far less cryptic and much easier to use than either of those tools. It's also the means by which AutoCAD tries to communicate with you. If you read the command prompt when entering commands, you'll never be confused as to what AutoCAD is asking you for, whether it's to select an object, pick a point, or enter a yes or no response. I find the single command line less than useful, so I'm going to expand my command line to show three lines of commands. I'm going to do this by hovering my cursor over the top of the command line until I get the expand cursor. Then, I can drag up and release. This will be the default for my interface for the remainder of the course. Just under the menu bar, sit the tool bar, and the drawing tabs which show all of your open drawings. Center stage of your screen, you should see the drawing window. This is actually where we will be creating our geometry and working with it. The subjects of paper space and model space will be discussed later, but suffice to say that this is the largest drafting table you've ever had access to, capable of displaying objects as small as a paperclip and much much smaller, to the layout of an entire city, and even larger still. The last thing I want to point out are these small red dots that litter about the screen. These are informational pop-ups regarding new features in this release. To view the new features, simply hold your cursor over the tool, and a pop-up will appear and describe the new feature or the changes. These will disappear after a restart of the program, but they can be turned off or back on under the help menu here. Take a few minutes to familiarize yourself with the interface, as it will be a large part of your work with AutoCAD for Mac.

Contents