Datasheet

tAking A guiDED tour

Note

If you see only the Ribbon tabs, right-click on one of the tabs and choose Minimize  Show Full Ribbon. If

you don’t even see the tabs, press the Esc key twice and type Ribbon ↵.

Move the arrow cursor onto one of the Ribbon panel tools and leave it there for a moment;

you’ll see a tool tip appear just below the cursor. Hold the cursor there a bit longer and the tool

tip changes to give you even more information about the tool.

In most cases, you’ll be able to guess what each tool does by looking at its icon. The icon with

an arc in the Draw Ribbon panel, for instance, indicates that the tool draws arcs; the one with

the circle shows that the tool draws circles; and so on. For further clariﬁcation, the tool tip gives

you the name of the tool.

As a new user, you’ll ﬁnd these tool tips helpful because they show you the name of the tool

and a brief description of how to use it. Typically, when I ask you to select a tool, I’ll use the

name shown in the tool tip to help you identify the tool. In the case of a tool with ﬂyouts, the

tool name changes under different conditions. For those tools, I’ll describe the tool using a gen-

eral description. You’ll learn more about ﬂyouts a bit later in this chapter.

Note

As you work through this book, I will ask you to select tools from the Ribbon panels. You’ll often be

asked to switch between different tabs to select tools from other sets of panels. To make the process

simpler to read, I’ll use a somewhat abbreviated description of a tools location. For example, to use

the Line tool, I’ll say, “Click the Line tool from the Home tab’s Draw panel.” To use the Move tool, I’ll

say, “Click the Move tool in the Home tab’s Modify panel,” and so on.

ex P a n D i n g Pa n e l s

In addition to the visible tools, a few tools are hidden from view. You can expand many of the

Ribbon panels to select more tools. If you see an arrowhead to the right of a panel’s title bar,

you can click the title bar to expand the panel (see Figure 1.8). The set of tools expands to reveal

some additional tools. If you click in the drawing area, the expanded panel shrinks back to its

original size. As an alternative, you can click the pushpin icon in the expanded panel title bar to

lock the panel in its open position.

Note

From now on, I’ll refer to the location of additional tools as the “expanded panel.” For example, I’ll say,

“Click the Ray tool in the expanded Draw panel” when I want you to select the Ray tool.

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