AutoCAD 2007

In This Chapter
Touring the AutoCAD 2007 screens
Going bar hopping: title bars, the menu bar, toolbars, and the status bar
Dynamically inputting and commanding the command line
Discovering the drawing area
Making the most of Model and Layout tabs
Practicing with palettes
Setting system variables and dealing with dialog boxes
Using online help
A
utoCAD 2007 is a full-fledged citizen of the Windows world, with toolbars,
dialog boxes, right-click menus, a multiple-document interface, and all the
other trappings of a real Windows program. And it's becoming more and more
Windows-like with each release. One of the last weird but essential holdovers
from the DOS days is the AutoCAD command line. The command line area is
still there (and wouldn't you know it, officially it's now known as the command
window), but in AutoCAD 2007, you'll be less reliant on this "look down here --
now look up here" method of interacting with the program.
AutoCAD 2007, like the fanciest Detroit iron, bristles with heads-up display
features. The dynamic input system puts much of the command line informa-
tion right under your nose (or at least under your crosshairs). And recently
entered data is just a right-click away.
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 will
be old hat for you -- although you may get a shock when you open AutoCAD
2007 for the first time, especially if you choose to enter the 3D Modeling
workspace the first time you start the program.
Most of the new features in AutoCAD 2007 are for creating and viewing objects
in three dimensions. In the previous edition of this book, we actually removed
the 3D chapter on the grounds that AutoCAD's 3D abilities were pretty clunky
to use, and people who did 3D design were probably using other software