the user interface in AutoCAD is key in working efficiently to help us out AutoCAD has created workspaces a workspace is an organized group of interface tools out-of-the-box
AutoCAD comes with four workspaces AutoCAD LT does not have the 3d workspaces that AutoCAD does so it may look a little bit differently but the functionality and the theory behind it is identical each one of these
workspaces is different from the other and each one fills certain needs and roles and we’ve looked at changing them before and you can come up to the quick access toolbar and quickly go through the different workspaces that you have available in AutoCAD you have the drafting and annotation if you’re doing just 2d work that’s typically where you’re going to be at you also have 3d basics and 3d modeling those are for three-dimensional tools AutoCAD LT does not have these and you have the AutoCAD classic workspace this will revert the interface back the way that things were before the ribbon became part of AutoCAD typically you’re going to stick with the drafting and annotation or the 3d modeling and AutoCAD depending on your work
to switch between the available workspaces you go to the workspace a switching tool you can come up here in the quick access toolbar or you can go down to your status bar and at this little gear you can come to it this is the actual workspace switching tool you pick it and you have all of these options and commands available to you the checkmark is for the workspace that is currently being used to change workspaces click on the arrow on to open it up and then pick the workspace you want to use
and that workspace will be loaded your ribbon will change your tabs will change your palates will change your toolbars etc switching between
workspaces
is very easy to do
the one you want and click it
now there are some things that you can do to manage your work spaces because AutoCAD is extremely customizable you don’t have to use what you’re given so you can make some changes and you do that through the workspace setting buttons you can get to them here quick access toolbar or through here through the workspace switching tool if you make changes to your workspaces you will need to save them
you can turn on the automatically Save Changes options here so that it will or you can leave that turned off but if you’re constantly tweaking your interface workspace on a daily basis you’re going to want to keep this on otherwise when you come back to work the next day and you reboot your computer turn AutoCAD back on you won’t have those changes made but if you’re afraid you’re going to mess something up then don’t and you just manually save your workspaces as you’re going now if you want to make your own workspace and I really suggest that you do you know it’s possible that you want to just tweak it a little bit or you want to completely revamp it that’s fine
but before you do that don’t mess with the out-of-the-box workspaces for a couple of reasons one is that if you mess it up which can happen then you have something to go back to that you know is going to work the other reason is that if someone else needs to work on your computer for you to help you out with something and if you’ve really changed the way it looks they may not be able to use it to help you so what you should do is keep these intact and then make a new one because they’re very easy to do
you can give it your name so that you know it’s yours you can give it a description because maybe there’s a specific type of drawing that you want to make and you need specific tools so you can do that so to get started pick on the save current as button name I’m going to give mine just my initials and just call it zero one not very creative I know but this is just an example so I tell you what we’ll call it BC B which are my initials we’ll call it example work space how’s that and I’ll even spell example correctly then I click Save this saves everything the way I have it right now as you can see it tells me this is the current workspace it is now an option for me to pick this is great so now I can come down here and go to my workspace settings and now I definitely want to automatically save my workspace changes this is the one I’m going to use the most because it’s my own personal settings I’m going to select it highlight it and move it up
now it will always appear at the top I can add a separator as well
that way I know that these are all of the default ones pick okay I’ll show you how it’s going to look when I come up here here’s mine and
the default once I know not to leave these alone and I can use this separator to help me visually organize my available workspaces
so now that I have one saved and I basically have my sandbox to play in here what can I do well there’s a lot you can just start essentially by clicking on the customize button here are my work spaces that I have available this is the one I’m currently using and it’s the one that I want to edit what we’ve opened up here is called the customize user interface or the cui this is the manager for that in here you can change the characteristics of your workspace I won’t get too deep into this you know real super deep because it can get real hairy and it doesn’t really fit the scope of this video but I do want to show it to you a little bit because there are a lot of quick and easy and simple things that you can do to change your workspace environment you can work in your ribbon you can work in your quick access toolbar right here you can make a new one and toggle between different ones you can make new ribbons you can make new toolbars new tabs new panels etc
if you want to edit this select it and right-click and pick the customize workspace option now this is going to show everything that I have in here on my right all of my menus
all of my palates
in all of my ribbon tabs and in each ribbon tab all of my panels now you can’t add a command to the ribbon but you can add a command to a ribbon panel and then you add the ribbon panels to the ribbon tabs and that’s how you customize it
now here’s a quick way of things that you can do if you want toolbars on you open up this toolbar by clicking on the little plus sign over here and you pick the ones you want whatever has a checkbox on it means it will be there so let’s say I want the draw toolbar and alright that’s all I really want not a problem now let’s look at the ribbon what tabs do I want you know this is only available here for the 3d tabs and things for AutoCAD not for AutoCAD LT but I can turn them all on if I wanted or I can turn some of them off these are contextual tabs you’re going to get these no matter what because the contextual tab we’ll talk about those a little bit later on are ones that will come up only during a specific command so for example when I’m working on hatches the hatch editor contextual tab will pop up giving me the controls for editing a hatch pattern now that’s nice it’s not up there all the time I only need it while I’m working with a hatch pattern or a hatch object so it’s contextual so it won’t be up there until I need it and that’s nice so let’s just add some things to it let’s say here I don’t want the render
I don’t want parametric I don’t want the output
just want some of these things we keep it very short very simple and we’re good now I can even come over here and I can see and verify yes it has what I want and we’re good to go I can go and make these changes all that I need to so basically to organize this all I need to do is just turn these things on and off as appropriate or as I want then when I’m finished I right-click on my workspace hit exit
good to go hit OK and then AutoCAD will update my workspace accordingly and now you can see I have a lot less options up here because I don’t need them for what I’m doing and I have my draw toolbar all the way on the left part of the screen
so that’s a real quick and easy look real short look at the custom user interface manager you can turn palates on or not you can turn the command line offer on etc now another thing that will happen is I can put on my
properties palette or any other palette set that up and since I have my autosave feature turned on this is going to show up every time and this is the way I’m going to use it and this is the way I want it so when I close out for the day or I switch workspaces this is going to be saved so let’s go back to my regular drafting and annotation workspace I’ve made her not here but when I go back
they’ll pop up
and there you go so this is nice this is easy and if you have multiple screens that you’re using then when you customize things that way they’ll stay there as well so this is good and this is a nice way to get the exact tools you need so maybe you want to just have a ribbon that has nothing to do with anything except for dimensioning your detail work you can do that you can set up a workspace for that you can call it dimensioning workspace etc so you make that change boom you have the tools that you want similar to maybe something on the annotate tab and you can work the way you want with the tools that you need
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