AutoCAD 2009 introduced the new interface system known as the ribbon since then each release has made it even better it moves from tab to tab much more quickly now than it did when it was first introduced this is good the ribbon is your main source of commands and drawing tools it groups similar commands together it also groups the commands by workflow meaning that the commands in a tab or panel are often executed in a series the ribbon which is right here by default is stationary at the top of your screen it’s made up of tabs we have home tab insert annotate layout etc
the main tab is your home tab this tab has several different commands in it that are used regardless of your design industry or project these commands are also amongst the most commonly used in each tab as a panel this is the draw panel modify layers annotation etc the panels contain the commands and tools that you will use panels like the tabs are grouped by similar commands for example the draw panel here on the left has the commands in it that you need to use to draw lines polylines circles of different types arcs etc if you’re creating new content our new line work you’re probably going to use one of the commands in the draw panel
similarly the annotation panel has text in it you can draw multi-line text single line text dimensions leaders etc to switch between tabs click the tab that you want to work in insert annotate this brings up the different panels for that tab group to start a command you just go to the panel with a command on it that you want and click the command and start drawing
and there’s a dimension
if you aren’t sure which command is for which command just hover over it you see that a tooltip will
we’ll come up and we’ll show you a bit of information about the command first it will tell you the name and a brief description if you stay there and let it sit for a few more moments even more information about that command will come up these are default settings so if someone else installed this for you they may have turned that off and you may find them annoying and you may want to turn them off that’s up to you
I’ll show you how to do that very quickly open up your options windows in previous sections we went over to the application menu click done options you can do that all you want or you can just type in o P on the command line and press Enter
this will also
options window now your tooltips tips art display features so you want to go to the display tab in your options and it’s in this windows elements section and it’s right here
you can show the tooltips and you can show the rollover tooltips the rollover tooltips are the real quick ones those are the ones that come up nearly immediately and they tell you the name of the command with a very short brief description of what it does now the tooltips are the ones that pop up later and go into great depth and then sometimes they’ll even show a brief animation of how it works you can delay that by a lot of different settings you can show them or you can tell it to wait 2 seconds or 10 seconds etc it’s up to you when you want it you want it fast you don’t want to sit there for 10 seconds so keeping it at about 2 or 3 is a good idea
and if you don’t want them at all just turn it off when you’re done click OK and if you’ve turned them off but find hey that might be useful I want to try it out for a while you can go back and turn it back on not a problem
now some of the panels in the ribbon collapse meaning that they shrink so as they give us more room on the screen like here in the annotate tab in the text panel we see that it has an arrow a down arrow right here same with these dimensions but not with the leaders this gives you more commands more options it does this to save space as you can see here in the dimensions there are a lot more commands that are available and sometimes too you’ll see it in the commands themselves that means there are options available to you click it and a list will come down and show you and this is the case in a lot of different panels like the drop panel or the modify or the layers the commands are going to use in the layers panel the most are shown up here the ones you’re going to want to use but not all the time will be down here same thing with modify and withdraw
so if you see that arrow click it that means there’s more options available it just opens up a different flyout panel and some of these commands like the circle have their own fly out just like the panel’s do so do the commands these are all circle commands but they will draw the circle in many different ways we’ll talk about it in that section later this will draw a circle from the center to the radius this will draw a circle based on its Center and diameter based on two points three points two tangent points in a radius or three tangent points you’ll find that this is true in a lot of different other commands some of these fly outs have different commands in them like a fillip chamfer or a blend tool or a trim or extend etc
some of them will populate it with a big long list like in the layers here so that’s how you get to any of your commands in the ribbon you find what you want you click it directly or maybe there’s a flyout and then you just click it and you start your command
there’s a circle that we just drew with two points
not finding exactly what you’re looking for but you really know that the circle options should be around here click an arrow that will bring up more options that you can choose from same thing with the commands and with the panels you can reposition your ribbon or you can make some changes to the way it looks you can do that up here this is your minimize button right now you can minimize it to just the tabs
saves a lot of space now all of your commands are still there you just have to click the Home tab to see them everything here as you go about your business it slowly disappears
same thing with annotate and here they are that saves you a lot of screen space now if you know where your commands are you’re very comfortable with a ribbon then this is a great way to go
but if you’re not so sure where the commands are yet you may want to keep it expanded out if you have a few more options you can minimize just to the panel titles so that okay here’s annotate oh yeah text dimensions leaders etc I can get to those that saves me some space but it also lets me know what’s in that ribbon tab
minimize it to the panel buttons themselves so
you get a visual display of the draw panel with all the commands here it’s up to you I can click on this button here to cycle through everything
or just to return it back to normal it’s up to you
working this way because it helps me to know where everything is and I’m going to leave it on this setting for the remainder of this video that way you can see where everything is it’s less confusing that way and it’s much more visual but again set AutoCAD to work the way you want to and you can always put it back later
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