File Tabs

autocad has several ways to open files and access them while you’re working in this section we will look at file tabs.

file tabs are found right here below the ribbon we have the ribbon and then we have our file tabs there is a tab displayed for every file that you have opened so I have four files open
construction lines movie house multi lines and poly line splines click the tab of the file you want to make current that will activate that file file tabs are very nice visual display that give you quick access to your open files so as I click on any of these tabs I will get access instantly to that file the tabs will be displayed in the order that you open the files so i opened up construction lines first then movie house etc but if you want them in a different order that’s fine just click hold it and then drag it you can see it will get moved around
if you have a bazillion files open and there isn’t enough room to display all the tabs an overflow menu on the right side of the screen will pop up you’ll be able to access your files that way so if a file is opened as a read-only file a lock icon will appear and I do have one of those open that is the polyline splines as you can see here on the left is a little lock that means it’s locked so if I try to save this file it won’t let me because I’ve opened it read only now if you see a little asterisk like in this construction lines drawing it’s kind of hard to see it’s real small but it’s there you can see that’s not here on these other two that means that I have edited the file but I haven’t saved any of my changes yet that’s a nice visual cue that I found very useful lets you know hey look you need to save that file before you lose anything so if I quicksave just by pressing ctrl + S on the keyboard you’ll see that a stir it goes away so when you pass the cursor over a file tab you get a little preview of all of the model space and paper space tabs so with this construction line one though I have it open right now you’ll see here is the model space tab in to layout tabs there’s nothing in either of these if I go to the movie house when I’m not clicking on it I’m just hovering over it you’ll see I have something here in model space and in this paper space tab called dimension so when you do pass over them you’ll get a little thumbnail preview it will also give you a display in the drawing area when you hover over the preview of each tab you also get a chance to publish or print that tab so you don’t have to necessarily activate the file to print it out you can just come here click plot and it will go to plot that file now if you right-click on the file tab I get the options to create a new file to open an existing file to save this file to save as to save all of the files or to close this file close all of them close all of them except this one I have clicked on one of my two favorite options on here is to copy the full file path or to open the file location and what that means is if I copy the full file path I left clicking that copies the pathway the full pathway of this file
so I know exactly where it is to my windows clipboard so now i can paste that into an email or into a report or i can even paste it as text right here into my autocad file now you can see where it is that’s just txt now the open file location will open Windows Explorer into the exact folder on my computer of where the file is so you’ll be able to get right to it here’s the CAD file I can do whatever I want to with it that’s really handy you believe me working with AutoCAD all day every day I find that I need to do these two things often so these two tools alone are very useful if you look and see the little plus icon here at the end of all the file tabs if you left click on it that is starting the new command it will open your folder where all of your templates are just go to any of these template files is fine click open opens it up and I have a new file and since it’s the latest one that I’ve opened it puts it up here on the right side and I get my previews now if you see the little X that will close the file in the ribbon we’re here on the Home tab we get most of our commands but if you go to the View tab on the ribbon and you come to the user interface panel there’s a button here called file tabs if I click this it will toggle the file tabs off so I’m going to turn that off to help save us some screen real estate but you can always turn it back on just by coming to the View tab on the ribbon the user interface panel and file tabs click it it will bring them all back you can leave that on or off