Datasheet
The Customer Involvement Program
Nearly all the latest releases of Autodesk products include the opportunity to
participate in the customer involvement program (CIP). The CIP is designed to
collect nonpersonal information about your Autodesk products and computer
system to help the product programmers and developers design software that
best meets their customers’ needs. If you haven’t yet agreed or disagreed to par-
ticipate, when you first start AutoCAD, you might be prompted to join with the
Customer Involvement Program dialog box.
Participation is strictly voluntary, and if you choose to participate, AutoCAD
will periodically send a small file to Autodesk containing information such as
your software name and version, the commands you use, and your system con-
figuration information. An Internet connection is required, and you must ensure
that your firewall settings don’t prevent the information from being transmitted.
Exploring the AutoCAD User Interface
After bypassing the initial dialog boxes that AutoCAD provides, the program opens
to display the AutoCAD user interface, also called the graphics window. AutoCAD
provides many methods for creating and editing objects, changing the view of a
drawing, or executing AutoCAD file maintenance or other utilities. In LT, your
screen looks similar to Figure 1.3. For AutoCAD, your monitor displays one of
three workspaces: the AutoCAD Classic workspace (also similar to Figure 1.3); the
3D Modeling workspace (see Figure 1.4); or the 2D Drafting & Annotation work-
space, which is similar to the AutoCAD Classic workspace. You’ll be using a varia-
tion of the AutoCAD Classic workspace for the first 14 chapters in this book. In the
final two chapters, you’ll switch to the 3D Modeling workspace, but for now, you
need to get your AutoCAD user interface to look like Figure 1.3.
NOTE
The figures and graphics is this book show the drawing area of
the AutoCAD user interface with a white background, but the default, and pre-
ferred, method is to use a black background to reduce eyestrain. The color
choice in the book is simply for readability.
Chapter 1 • Getting to Know AutoCAD4
AutoCAD and LT
offer numerous dia-
log boxes with vari-
ous combinations of
buttons and text
boxes.You’ll learn
their many functions
as you progress
through the book.
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