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I would like to take a moment to review changes made to the AutoCAD 2007 graphical user interface. Do not confuse the graphical user interface with the new AutoCAD 2007 workspaces. Workspaces are drawing environments with customized settings. The 2 default workspaces are provided to assist you in creating 2D and 3D drawing projects. Here is one analog that might help you understand workspaces. Think of drawing by hand verses building a model by hand; to draw by hand you would sit at your drawing table and use paper and scale and a pencil to complete a project. To build a model by hand you would sit at your drawing table and use foam board, a blade and some glue to complete your project. The drawing table is like the AutoCAD interface and the materials needed to complete the projects are like the workspaces, AutoCAD understands the need for separate drawing environments. The AutoCAD classic workspace is configured for 2D drawing and the 3D modeling workspace is configured for 3D drawing. The ability to customize the interface is still available. I can close palettes and I can open toolbars. When I switch between workspaces, the drawing is not effected only the environment. Now I assume you are familiar with the previous versions of AutoCAD so I will not go into details at this point regarding the ucyis icon, that will come later. So what's new and improved? Well I am going to point out the many features through out the tutorial I would like to gets targeted by focusing on five major points. Number one, before you panic as I almost did I would like to point out that the express tools, layers toolbar is no longer available. In its place you now have the layers 2 toolbar. You can also find these commands from the formats, pull down menu by selecting layer tools. Number two with regard to the model and layout tabs you can right click on one of the tabs and select hide, layout and model tabs. To restore the tabs simply right click on the newly placed icons in the status bar to display the tabs once again. Number three, the command line window now floats like a palette and I can turn on the auto hide feature. When you first start using AutoCAD it is important to keep an eye on the command line. But with enough experience using this project combined with dynamic input, you may feel that the command line is no longer necessary. Remember you can always toggle the AutoCAD text window using the F2 key. Number four, to maximize the drawing space you can click in the lower right hand corner and select the clean screen icon. When you click on that you'll see that this hides the toolbars. If you click on the icon once again, the toolbars are restored. Number five, switching to the 3D modeling workspace, something new to AutoCAD is the dashboard. This is a palette which I'll be using much later in the tutorial but I like to make mention of it now. The dashboard contains control panels with tools and controls. The control panels are very much like the toolbars, but instead of having multiple toolbars open, you now have one dashboard. You can also open the dashboard palette from the tools pull down menu which is located right here. In closing I would like to state that for the purpose of this tutorial I currently have my screen resolution set to 800 by 600 pixels. I would recommend that you use a minimum resolution of 1024 by 768 pixels. This will allow you to open more toolbars if necessary or to increase the size of your drawing area. As for the other features I will continue to introduce them through out this tutorial as I discuss 2D and 3D architectural drawing.