The application menu and Quick Access toolbar (QAT) - AutoCAD Tutorial

- [Instructor] We're starting a new chapter now where we are taking a look at the AutoCAD interface. Now I mentioned the AutoCAD interface in the introduction to the course. We're going to dive a bit deeper now into that interface and see all the items that tie into the interface to actually make AutoCAD work and allow you to utilize AutoCAD effectively. So we've got a new drawing for you. This time it's called interface.dwg. And you can download it from the library as I mentioned in the introductory videos. So we've got interface.dwg open, and you can see that we are in the model tab down here, bottom left. And it's a floor plan layout. It looks remarkably similar to the floor plan layout in the introductory videos, which it is. It's pretty much the same file but renamed. So what we've got is a separate new file for you to use. Now when you've got the interface.dwg file open, you'll see that all of the ribbon is lit up and active, which means you can use all the commands in AutoCAD. Now there are some other tools apart from the ribbon that you can use when you're working with AutoCAD. I'm going to go through two of these in this video. One of them is the application menu, and the other one is the Quick Access Toolbar, sometimes known as the QAT for short. Now these are located in the top left corner of your AutoCAD window on your screen. So if you go up here, you'll see there's a big red A with a little arrow next to it. Now every single Autodesk product has an application menu in the top left corner. So A there is for AutoCAD, so the red A represents AutoCAD. So if I click on that little flyout arrow, that will open up what is known as your application menu. Now your application menu is all of those sort of fundamental commands that you need to run the software. So we've got things like new, if I hover over new I can start a new drawing or a new sheet set. We don't cover sheet sets in this course, but I could start a new drawing and start it with a template. I can open up existing files. I can open files from AutoCAD web and mobile. I can open up sheet sets, DGNs, and there's also a whole load of sample files that are installed and online. Save, one would hope that you know how to save a file by now, and also save as. But you can save us different file formats in AutoCAD. Things like templates, drawing standards, and other formats. You'll notice you can also save to AutoCAD web and mobile. That's the cloud based repository for your drawings. We'll cover that a little bit later. I can import files such as PDFs, DGNs, and other formats. I can also export out to other file types you'll notice as well. So DWF is an Autodesk file type. You can export out to PDF, DGN and other file formats. You'll also notice here I can publish, so I can send to a 3D print service if I'm creating 3D, which we're not in this course. But I can archive, I can e-transmit, I can email drawings. I can share a view using what is known as the Autodesk Viewer which is an online browser-based viewing tool. And I can share the drawing using AutoCAD on the web as well. Here I can print, these are all your print settings. So you've got things like plotting, batch plotting. You can preview a plot. And you'll notice that AutoCAD uses the word plot and not print. So we've got an overall print, but you're printing your plots of your drawings, as you can see. I can 3D print, I can manage my plotters and so on. I can manage my plot styles and edit plot style tables as well. Those are quite advanced things but as you start getting used to AutoCAD, you'll find that in this application menu, you'll start using more of the functionality. Drawing utilities, I can check my drawing properties, I can compare drawings, set my units. I can audit drawings and check my status of my drawings. I can also purge items I don't need. And I can recover and check in the drawing recovery manager my recovered drawings as well 'cause sometimes a drawing might get corrupted and need to be recovered. And then I can close as well, so I can close the current drawing I've got open or all drawings if I've got more than one drawing open. Now, last but not least, down here I can click on options. Now if I click on options in the application menu that will open up the options dialog box. And there's a lot of stuff in here. I'm not going to go through it all, but you can see that I can go to files, display, open and save. And all of these allow me to set all of the different settings within my AutoCAD installation. We cover this in a lot more depth in the AutoCAD Essential Training Course. I'll just click on cancel there to make sure that I don't make any changes. So that's your application menu in your AutoCAD. What about this Quick Access Toolbar I mentioned? Well, this is actually pretty easy to use. It's just these icons up here at the top. So I can create a new file, I can open a file, I can save, save as. So these are similar to some of the commands on the application menu. I've then got open from web and mobile, which is the cloud-based repository for my drawings. And I've also got save to web and mobile. So that's all based around the cloud. I can also plot which prints my drawings. I've got undo, redo. I've also got share where I can share drawings using the AutoCAD on the Web application too. Now you'll notice there's a funny little icon here. Now if I hover over that, it looks like an eject symbol on an old CD player. For those of us that obviously remember CDs. If I click there, that allows me to customize the Quick Access Toolbar. So I can add other commands to the Quick Access Toolbar that I use on a regular basis. One of the most common ones is layer. So if I click on layer there now, can you see it's added my layer dropdown for this drawing? So there's all the layers in the drawing. So I can switch them on and off, I can freeze them, thaw them, lock them, et cetera, using that dropdown menu, which is incredibly useful. If I don't want that layer on there, I click on the little eject button again and I click on layer and we lose that on the Quick Access Toolbar. So that Quick Access Toolbar is just a great little location for icons and commands that you use on a regular basis, that you just want on the screen all the time, because sometimes you might be, for example, in the insert tab there on the ribbon. Now there's no layers panel on the ribbon. I have to go back to the home tab for that. And there's the layer drop down there, for example. So that layer setting on the Quick Access Toolbar will just save me that little bit of time if I need it. So utilize the Quick Access Toolbar if you need it. It's a really useful little sort of tool within your AutoCAD repertoire. And what I suggest you do is once you've watched this video, maybe go away and customize your Quick Access Toolbar so that you can obviously have some extra commands up there that you might use on a regular basis. So go on, go and have a go with that Quick Access Toolbar and customize it to the way you want it to look.