AutoCAD® 2008 and AutoCAD LT® 2008 Bible

Chapter 3. Using Commands

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Using menus, dialog boxes, toolbars, and palettes in the Windows interface

• Working with Dynamic Input and the command line

• Repeating and canceling commands

• Undoing and redoing commands

• Executing a command within another command

• Executing two commands concurrently

• Using the Help system

AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT have been around for a long time. As a result, the way you give the program commands — called the user interface — is somewhat unique. You can give the same command in several ways. In this chapter, you read about the various possibilities and start to get acquainted with all of them.

Commands are important. In a word processing program, you can simply start typing; in a spreadsheet program, you can begin by entering data, but in most cases nothing happens in AutoCAD or AutoCAD LT until you give it a command.

The AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT Interface

Many new commands have been added to AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT over the years. Often, older commands that were no longer necessary were kept to maintain compatibility with earlier releases. A number of these older commands, as well as certain rarely used commands, are not found in the menus. Other than this idiosyncrasy, the menus are similar to those of other Windows programs.

Using menus

A menu item can do three things — execute a command, open a submenu, or open a dialog box. As in all Windows programs, the menu items provide clues to let you know what is going to occur after you click a menu item, as follows: ...