AutoCAD® 2009 For Dummies®

Chapter 2. Le Tour de AutoCAD 2009

In This Chapter

• Touring the AutoCAD 2009 screens

• Comparing the new and the classic looks

• Browsing AutoCAD's menus

• Going bar hopping: title bars, the menu bar, toolbars, and the status bar

• Unraveling the Ribbon

• Practicing with palettes

• Discovering the drawing area

• Using online help

AutoCAD 2009 is a fully fledged member of the Windows world, but if you're using Windows XP or have yet to kick the tires of the Microsoft Office 2007 suite, you may not recognize much in AutoCAD's newest version. But the title bar says "AutoCAD 2009," so you must be in the right place!

Like the rest of the book, this chapter is written for someone who has used other Windows programs but has little or no experience with AutoCAD. If you are experienced with recent versions of AutoCAD, some of this chapter may be old hat (even if it does look really different). Here and throughout the rest of the book, I show you how to do things in the updated workspace named 2D Drafting & Annotation, but I also include alternative methods that direct you to the same functions in the traditional AutoCAD Classic workspace. Later in this chapter, I even show you how to make the new version look a lot like an old one.

Note

By default, AutoCAD 2009 opens in the 2D Drafting & Annotation workspace and will do so until you make another workspace current. There's just one toolbar (the Quick Access toolbar, a new one in AutoCAD 2009) and no menu bar in this default environment. Instead, the 2D Drafting & Annotation ...