Datasheet

Another option for switching between open drawings is to click the
Quick View Drawings button in the status bar. This displays thumb-
nails for the open drawings, and you can click any thumbnail to make
that drawing active.
Using the Drop-Down Menus
If you prefer to use drop-down menus, they’re still available in AutoCAD 2009,
although they are turned off by default in the 2D Drafting & Annotation and 3D
Modeling workspaces. You can display them by switching to the AutoCAD Classic
workspace, by right-clicking on the Quick Access toolbar and choosing Show
Menu Bar, or by entering menubar1. The menu bar isn’t used in the exer-
cises in this book, but I’ll cover the menus here in case you want to use them in
the future.
The left end of the menu bar, just below the title bar (see Figure 1.17), consists
of an icon and 12 (11 if you don’t have the Express Tools installed or are using LT)
menus. Click any of these to display a drop-down menu. The icon and the File and
Edit menus are included with all Windows-compliant applications, although they
are somewhat customized to work with AutoCAD. The drop-down menu associ-
ated with the icon contains commands to control the appearance and position of
the drawing area.
FIGURE 1.17: The AutoCAD user interface showing the menu bar
Commands in the File menu are for opening and saving new and existing draw-
ing files, printing, exporting files to another application, choosing basic utility
options, and exiting the application. The Edit menu contains the Undo and Redo
commands, the Cut and Paste tools, and options for creating links between Auto-
CAD files and other files. The Help menu works like most Windows Help menus
and contains a couple of AutoCAD-specific entries as well, including some online
resources and a link to the New Features Workshop.
Chapter 1 • Getting to Know AutoCAD
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