But wait! There’s more under the Big Red A

In addition to the Application Menu’s actual file menu items, a few other features
are worth a mention:
 Recent Documents: If you choose this option, the right pane displays
a list of drawings you’ve recently edited but that aren’t currently open.
You can show them in a simple list or as thumbnail images, as shown in
Figure below. You can also pin them to stop them from scrolling off the list.
Naturally enough, clicking one of the icons opens the drawing.

Open Documents: Choose this option to see whatfs already open, and
click an item to switch to it. This is equivalent to pressing Ctrl+Tab to
switch between open documents in any Windows program and works
the same basic way as the Quick View Drawings feature, described in the
gLooking for Mr. Status Barh section, later in the chapter.
Options: Click this button to open the Options dialog box, where you
can make hundreds of system settings. You can also open Options by
typing OP (the alias for the OPTIONS command).
Search: If youfre not sure of a command name or you want help on a
topic, just start typing in the Application Menufs search bar. AutoCAD
2011 very quickly displays a categorized list, complete with links to start
commands or to access the online help (see Figure below).

• Unraveling the Ribbon

It’s a whole new racetrack in AutoCAD 2011. In AutoCAD 2008 and prior
releases, you bounced around a bunch of palettes, toolbars, and dashboard
panels to find the commands you wanted. Now everything (well . . . almost
everything) lives in one place: the Ribbon.

The primary interface element in the 2D Drafting & Annotation, 3D Basics,
and 3D Modeling workspaces is the Ribbon, an adjustable area that contains
different collections of tabbed, task-oriented collections of panels. Some
panels — those marked with a little black triangle on the panel label — have
more tools concealed on a slideout (see Figure below). Click the panel label to
open the slideout. You can click the pushpin icon to pin the slideout open —
otherwise, it will slide away home after you click a button.
In AutoCAD 2011, you can click-and-drag a Ribbon panel and pull it into the
drawing area. So if, for example, you find yourself doing a whack of dimensioning,
but you also want to move away from the Annotate tab to other Ribbon
tabs, you can drag the Dimensions panel into the drawing, and it will stay put,
even as you switch to other panels or tabs. Just be sure to put it back where it
came from when you’re finished with it (as your mom used to say).
Autodesk’s programmers see the Ribbon as an alternative way of interacting
with the program. Theoretically, the Ribbon eliminates the need for menus
and separate toolbars, although the change-averse may think otherwise. The
Ribbon is fully customizable, but I don’t get into customizing AutoCAD in
this book — if you want to find out more, click Customization Guide in the
AutoCAD 2011 online help’s Home page.

By default, the Ribbon is docked at the top of the screen, but it can be
docked against any edge, anchored to the left or right side of the AutoCAD
window, or floated. To gain some screen space, you can click the little white
button to the right of the last tab on the Ribbonfs tab bar to minimize the
Ribbon, first to tabs and panel labels, and then to tabs only. Click one more
time to revert to the full Ribbon.
Instead of menus of grouped commands like Draw, Modify, Insert, and so
forth, the tabs are organized by task as follows:
Home: The Home tab contains Draw, Modify, Layers, Annotation, Block,
Properties, Utilities, and Clipboard panels. Some panels may be displayed
as collapsed depending on your screen resolution (the Tables,
Markup, and Annotation Scaling panels at the right end of the Annotate
tab in Figure above is in a collapsed state).
 Insert: This tab groups Block and Reference panels, as well as Import
commands and a series of commands for working with nongraphical
information, including attributes, fields, and data links.
Annotate: The Annotate tab expands on the minimalist Annotation panel
on the Home tab, with many more options for creating text, dimensions,
leaders, and tables, as well as markup functions and a few annotation
scaling tools.
Parametric: This tab is home for one of AutoCAD 2011fs most powerful
features . parametric drawing. You can apply geometric or dimensional
parameters or constraints to drawing objects so that, say, two
circles are always concentric or the length of a rectangle is always twice
its width. (AutoCAD LT is limited in this department: You can modify
or delete existing constraints, but you need the full version to create
them.)
View: The View tab contains tools and panels for controlling drawing
display, working with user coordinate systems and viewports, loading
various palettes, and organizing Windows functions such as cascading
open files or displaying different parts of the application window. I
explain most of the features on this tab later in the book.
 Manage: This tab contains panels that access the Action Recorder,
CAD Standards (neither of which is in AutoCAD LT), and a set of drawing
management and customization tools. I donft cover anything on the
Manage tab in this book.
 Output: Panels on this tab let you get those drawings off your hands by
printing, publishing, or simply sending them electronically to others.
Express Tools: The Express Tools are an invaluable set of custom commands
that will streamline your work procedures in pretty well every
aspect of AutoCAD. Theyfre officially unsupported, but theyfve been
an install option for many releases now, and mostly, they work very
well. You get this tab only if you have the full version of AutoCAD . the
Express Tools are not available in AutoCAD LT.