The application menu - AutoCAD Tutorial

- [Instructor] We're starting a new chapter now in the learning AutoCAD course, and we're going to get you started with the AutoCAD interface. For that reason, we've got a new drawing for you. It's called interface.dwg. And as I mentioned in the introduction, you can download that from the library to follow along with the videos in this chapter. You can store that locally on your PC, perhaps on a network if you're on a network, perhaps even in the cloud if you're using something like Dropbox or OneDrive. So, let's get started with the AutoCAD interface. The first thing we're going to look at is the application menu. You will find the AutoCAD application menu in the top left corner of your AutoCAD screen, it's that big red A up hear. So when I click on it, there's the application menu like so. Now you'll notice all the commands on the left hand side of the application menu. So let's start there, so if I hover over New, you can see I can start a new drawing or a new sheet set. Sheet sets are covered in a different course in the library. I can open files like so, I can open from AutoCAD web and mobile too. We'll cover that later. You can Save and you can also Save as, and you'll see there's different file types that you can save out to as well. You can import files into AutoCAD, you can export files out of AutoCAD as well. And there's lots of different file types that you can utilize. You can publish your designs using archive, a transmit email, and also sharing views in the cloud. You can also print as well, you can plot, you can batch plot, you can do a plot preview. You can also set up page setups for different types of plotting and you'll notice that you can also 3D print to something like Autodesk print studio if it's available. That allows you to perhaps start thinking about 3D printing 3D objects that you might design in the full AutoCAD. You can't use 3D and AutoCAD LT for example. Drawing utilities there's numerous utilities in AutoCAD that allow you to work with your drawings. Things like drawing properties, DWG compare, units, audit status, and purge. You'll also notice that you can close your drawing or drawings, you can close the current drawing, or you can close all drawings if you've got more than one drawing open in your current AutoCAD session. So there's all the different commands available on the application menu. Let's move up to these two little icons here. At the moment, they're showing me the recent documents I've had open as these files here. I can change it just to the open documents that I may have. And you'll notice there's different settings there. So if I go back to recent documents, I can look at an ordered list and sort it by date, size, or type. If I want to, I can also go back here, and I can have Small icons, Large Icons, Small images, or Large images like so. I tend to prefer the small icons just keeps it neat and tidy, I can also pin open say my interface.dwt file. That means every time I go back to the application menu that will always be pinned there at the top of the list. Great if you're working on projects where you go into drawings regularly, all the time on a day to day basis, I'll just jump in that now as well. You'll also notice at the top, I can search my commands. If I type in a line for the line command, it will then take me to all of the different instances of the line command available in the help screens. It explains things like matches for where it is on the ribbon tab, and so on and so forth. There's a whole load of them there because line is one of the most commonly used commands in AutoCAD. I can just delete that again in that bar at the top and I'm back to my application menu again. Last but not least, down here at the bottom, I can click on Options. What that opens then is the Options dialog box which allows me to go in and set all of my options and settings in my AutoCAD. Now these settings that you set here are permanent, and will be set there until you change them to something else. All of these settings here are remembered by AutoCAD on a day to day basis. So if you change the settings in your options, what will happen is you'll go home that evening, save all your drawings, when you come back in and open up AutoCAD again, those settings will remain set to what you've set them to. That's what your options are all about in AutoCAD, allowing you to customize your AutoCAD to suit the way that you work your working processes, either within your organization or at work or at college, etc. I will just close the Options dialog box now and you'll notice that has also closed the application menu as well.