Subtitles of the Movie

The AutoCAD Command Line at the bottom of the AutoCAD screen has been around since the days of MSDOS when AutoCAD used to run in DOS and you had to type in every Command. It's down here at the bottom of the screen and I can actually mov my pointer over it and click and you'll see the cursor flashing there now at the Command Prompt. When you execute any AutoCAD Command you will see that variables and subcommands are available on the Command Line. However, because AutoCAD has a much more graphical user interface now, a GUI, or Gooey for short, you will notice that a lot of your design is down with what they call Heads Up Display, which is actually patented technology by Autodesk. You do everything on the screen in front of you in the Drawing Area. It's very rare now that you have to go down to the Command Line and type. But if I type in Circle, like so, and press Enter, you'll see that it asks me to specify the Centerpoint for Circle. If I move into the Drawing Area I've also got that prompt on my crosshair there because my Dynamic Input is switched on. We'll cover Dynamic Input in a moment. But what we've got here is the ability to type things in on the Command Line, but also monitor what's going on on the Command Line, so you'll notice there on the Command Line you can see Specify centerpoint for circle, or 3P, 2P, TTR, 1010 Radius. Those are three other Circle Drafting options. Now, I can either right-click and bring them up on the Shortcut Menu, like so, you'll see them there: 3P, 2P, TTR, like so. I'm going to hit Escape there, and just lose that menu, or, you'll notice on the Dynamic Input there's that funny little symbol there after the word Or, it indicates a Down arrow on a keyboard and you can see there I've also got 3P, 2P, and TTR. I'm going to hit Escape there and come out of the Circle Command, and I'm going to draw a 3-point Circle now using purely the Command Line. So, I go down to Command here, click, and put the cursor there. You don't actually have to click and put the cursor there. I can actually just type the word Circle if I want to, and it will go into the Dynamic Input like so, and then I press Enter and you'll see that I still get that prompt on the Command Line anyway, even though I'm getting it on the screen with the Dynamic Input as well. Now, what I can do though, is I can go down here now, like that, and on the Command Line if I keep my crosshair there like that I'm going to type in 3P, like that. You can see it on the Command Line there, and I press Enter. It'll now ask me to Specify the first point on the Circle; I come up, the Dynamic Input there is prompting me: First point on Circle. So, I go 1, 2, 3 and there's my 3-point Circle, after specifying three points on the screen. Now, that's great. I can work with the Command Line, I can work with the Dynamic Input, I can work with the Shortcut Menus. There are lots of different ways of inputting data. So, why do we have the Command Line? Well, one of the things that a lot of people use nowadays with current technology is they have the ability to have what they call a jewel-head graphics card. Now what this means is you can have two monitors plugged into your computer, you can have all your AutoCAD drawing information on one screen and you can have your Command Line screen on the other screen. How do you do that? Well, it's very easy. The Command Line is actually dockable like a Toolbar, so if I drag it away from the bottom of the screen, if I click in on that gray area on the left, it is now, in essence, a Palette. It's like a Tool Palette. I can make it bigger, I can make it smaller, using the Windows technology, like so. So, now when you look at the Command Line, look. There's all my history of what I've been doing. You can see there I've been working with Circle, 2D Drafting and Annotation Workspaces, there, you can see all the information there, and I can scroll up and down, and look. You can see where I've been working with that drawing. All the history of that drawing in the current AutoCAD Session. I can also Auto Hide it. If I switch Auto Hide on, it acts in exactly the same way as a Palette does. Hover over it and there it is. So I'll switch Auto Hide off there by clicking on that Icon there. So, you can see the Command Line is extremely versatile now. It's not just fixed at the bottom of the screen anymore like it used to be. It's still an essential part of AutoCAD 2010. So, to dock that back at the bottom of the screen I click on the Title Bar, I drag it down, see it go horizontal, just like a toolbar, release the mouse button, and it's back at the bottom of the screen. Now what I can also do there, I can resize it if I wish by dragging it up like that, I'll get a few more lines there if I want them. Drag it down again, and I'm back to where I was before. As you can see, versatile, visual, and effective.