AutoCAD® 2011 & AutoCAD LT® 2011 Bible

Chapter 3. Using Commands

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Using the Ribbon, menus, dialog boxes, toolbars, and palettes

• Working with Dynamic Input and the command line

• Repeating, canceling, undoing, and redoing commands

• Executing a command within another command

• 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, and 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 interface. Other than this idiosyncrasy, the interface is similar to those of other Windows programs. Specifically, the Ribbon is similar to the latest version of Microsoft Office.

You use the user interface to execute commands and to specify settings and values. The user interface consists of the default Ribbon, the Quick Access Toolbar, the optional drop-down list bar, shortcut ...