Subtitles of the Movie

The Status Bar in AutoCAD is a settings tool that allows you to adjust your settings in AutoCAD to suit your drafting environment. If we look down right at the bottom of the AutoCAD screen you can see your Status Bar. On the left you can see a coordinate read out and as I move the crosshair around you can see that coordinate read out change. That coordinate read out is giving you the coordinates of the crosshair at all times. If I go down to those coordinates and actually click on them I can switch my coordinates OFF. If I click on it again the coordinates come back on. You can see those prompts kicking off on the Command Line there. If I right click on Coordinates area I can switch it off on the Shortcut Menu as well, if I right click again I can switch it back to Absolute Coordinates. Just the right of the coordinates read out we have a group of icons available to us, these icons are our Drafting settings. We have Snap settings, we have Grid settings, we have Ortho settings, we have Polar Tracking settings, we have Object Snap settings. We also have Object Snap Tracking, Dynamic UCS, Dynamic Input, Line Weight and also Quick Properties. Quick Properties is a new feature to AutoCAD 2009 and allows you to actually set properties on the screen. For example if I switch Quick Properties on now by clicking on the button notice the Quick Properties Panel is on, is indicated on the Command Line. If I now draw a line on the AutoCAD screen, notice I'm using my Dynamic Input there, there's my line, I'll just finish drawing that line and I'm going to click on that Line now with the Quick Properties switched ON. Notice the Quick Properties Panel appears, I can change the color of my line by clicking in the Quick Properties Panel, and that line is now red. I want to Close that panel now, so I click on the Cross, AutoCAD prompts me that Quick Properties will be turned off. What it also prompts me is the fact that Quick Properties on the Status Bar will be turned off when I click on Close Panel. Notice Quick Properties is off now on the Status Bar. I'll just hit Escape a couple times to deselect that line on the screen. So these are your settings to allow you to draft properly and efficiently in AutoCAD. For example Object Snaps, if I right click over the Object Snap Icon all my Object Snaps are available there. Notice Object Snaps is enabled and I'm using icons. If I click on Use Icons, it switches back to the original way that the Drafting Settings were displayed on the Status Bar. For those of you that have used previous versions of AutoCAD you'll be familiar with this. If I right click on Object Snap again and go back to user icons the icons come back on the screen. The icon driven user interface is becoming more and more prevalent with later versions of AutoCAD, especially when we look over at the right hand part of the Status Bar here. Notice that Model and Layout now are again on icons, if I right click on them and Display Layout and Model tabs, the tabs appear as they do in previous versions of AutoCAD. So you can see that I'm flicking between Layout and Model space by using the tabs. If I right click over the tabs and hide the Layouts and Model tabs again the icons appear down on the here on the Status Bar. I have some new features in AutoCAD 2009 that make that even quicker, if I click on Quick View Layouts on the status bar I can quickly click on Model, Layout1 or Layout2. I'm then going to go back to Model and then Close my Quick View Layouts. That allows me to work with Layouts quickly, I can also do the same with drawings on the Status Bar by using Quick View Drawings and now there's my current drawing open, I can go to Model, I can go to Layout or Layout2. I'm going to make sure I'm in my Model space and then Close my Quick View Drawings. So these are new features in AutoCAD 2009 on the Status Bar that make my drafting day much easier. I also have down here at the bottom of the screen Pan and Zoom, very commonly used in AutoCAD. When I click on Pan I can Pan around in the drawing by left click and holding on the mouse using the hand instead of the crosshair. If I come down here to the bottom of the screen again, notice I get my Command Line there but also I get my Windows Task Bar coming up because its set to Auto-hide to give me more screen real estate while I'm using AutoCAD. To come out of the Pan Mode the quickest way to do it is to right click and Exit, that way I'm doing it all on screen and not worrying about my Windows Task Bar coming up. If I go to Zoom by left clicking and holding the mouse button again I can Zoom like so and there you go I can Zoom Window to a particular part of the screen. What I can also do there is I can right click and Undo my Pan and my Zoom, again using the Shortcut Menu notice that undoes the last Zoom that I performed. There is some new features here in AutoCAD 2009, the Steering Wheel and the Show Motion buttons. These are going to be covered in a later AutoCAD 2009 course, moving along the Status Bar Annotation Scale and your Annotation Scale Settings; these will be covered in this course but in a later section. The button I do want to look at is here, your Workspace Switching, this will be covered again in a later AutoCAD course, but let's have a flavor of that now. By clicking on the Workspace button on the Status Bar, again it's there on the Status Bar to make your life easier. I'm going to go to my 3D Modeling Workspace, one of the default workspaces available in AutoCAD 2009 and as you can see now the Ribbon at the top of the screen has changed, I now have 3D modeling tools available to me. Notice my Tool Palettes are available to me on the right hand part of the screen there, docked and ready to go for me to use blocks and 3D Modeling Tools. If I go back to my Workspace Switching button and go back to my 2D Drafting and Annotation, you'll see now that I've gone back to the workspace that I was using previously. This allows you to move in and out of different workspaces to perform different functions of AutoCAD; again, it's on the Status Bar, easy to use and in front of you all the time. The last button here is your toolbar and window positions, unlocked; if I click on the Padlock I can lock the positions of my toolbar and my floating windows and panels and so on. If I lock all of my Dock Toolbars and Panels now, I cannot change the positions of them on the screen. If I click and Unlock them again, by clicking on the Dock Toolbars Panel you'll notice now that, that tick is gone. So what it allows me to do perhaps as a CAD Manager is lock the positions of Toolbars and Panels to avoid casual AutoCAD users changing the positions and making it difficult to find commands in AutoCAD. Last but not least down here at the bottom of the screen I have a Clean Screen Option, this allows me to actually work with a clean screen. So what I do here is if I click on Clean Screen, I now have a clean AutoCAD screen with no Ribbon, no Toolbars only the icons on the Status Bar. Now to get my clean screen back off the easiest way to do it is to go down to Command Line and type, Clean Screen Off. That brings everything back again to normal and allows me to continue Drafting in AutoCAD. As you can see the Status Bar is very useful, you'll be using it all of the time while you're drafting in AutoCAD, especially the left hand area of the status with your Drafting Settings.