AutoCAD Interface Elements

Application Menu

The first thing you might see after launching AutoCAD is the Application Menu, in the far upper left
corner. In AutoCAD, it’s generally contains a big red “A”. (Other products generally have a different color
and letter). When you single-click this button a menu drops down that contains some of the same items
in the QAT, plus more. Probably more importantly, the application menu contains links to your most
recently accessed drawings, and sheet sets. With the click of a button you can change this to a list of
currently open drawings.

Quick Access Toolbar (QAT)

Right next to the At the top of the UI, in the title bar area, is the Quick Access Toolbar, or QAT. By
default the QAT contains icons for the following commands: Qnew, Open, QSave, SaveAs, Plot, Undo,
and Redo. But like most other UI elements, you can customize this to meet your desires. Below is the
stock QAT, highlighted to show its position.

Ribbon

The ribbon is a UI tool that first appeared in AutoCAD 2009. It contains various commands organized
into tabs and panels. It can be heavily customized by administrators and end users. Contextual tabs are
very powerful, they appear with panels of commands and options relating to whatever task is at hand
and/or whatever entity type is selected.

In-Editor elements

There are a few elements you may find inside the drawing editor, and are shown in their default location
in the image below. The visibility of each of these can be controlled by the user. The viewport controls
are in the upper left corner, and allow you to change the view and visual style. The Viewcube is in the
upper right, from which you can change the view and UCS. Just below that is the NavBar, that gives you
controls for zooming, panning, orbiting, and more. Lastly, in the lower left hand corner, is the UCS icon,
which can tell you at a glance if you are in WCS, and/or the general orientation of the UCS.

Status Bar

Moving to the bottom of the application, you will find the Status Bar. Since AutoCAD 2015, the status
bar contains icons only. By default several icons are not enabled, so you might want to turn them on.
We believe Autodesk does this because on a small monitor, all of the icons may not fit across on one
row. But the icons will wrap up to a second row if needed, and on any decent sized monitor these days,
at 1920×1080 resolution, you can enable all of the status bar icons and they fit with ease.

File Tabs

File tabs provide access to all open documents in a minimal amount of space. Each open document has
its own tab. Left-click on a tab to make it current, and right-click on a tab to access more options, such as
Save and Close. There is always a tab containing a plus sign to open a new document using the QNEW
command. By default, File Tabs are oriented at the top of the documents, below the Ribbon.

Layout Tabs

Layout tabs provide access to Model Space and each Layout in a given document. Left-click on a tab to
make it current, and right-click on a tab to access more options such as Print, Move, or Rename. There is
always a tab containing a plus sign for the creation of a new layout. By default, Layout Tabs are oriented
at the bottom of the editor window and if the command line is docked, below that – in the status bar
area.
Shortcut Menu

By default, with no command active, if you right-click in the drawing editor, you will get the Shortcut
Menu. This pop-up menu contains recent commands, and other common commands. You can customize
this menu, like most other UI items. If there is a command active, a different menu may appear when
you right-click. This behavior is controlled by the SHORTCUTMENU system variable.

Drop-Down Menus

Drop-down, or pull-down menus have been around since almost the beginning of AutoCAD, long before
Windows was a platform. A top level clickable name reveals commands and/or sub menus below. These
commands support macros and even autolisp statements. The menu disappears when a command is
selected and/or the menu loses input focus. Drop-down menus are not enabled by default. You can turn
them on by entering the command MENUBAR and setting it to 1.

Toolbars

Toolbars go back to the early 1990’s in AutoCAD. These are flat panels that contain buttons and or drop-
down lists. Each button contains an icon and a macro to perform a command or macro. Toolbars can be
floating or docked.

Palettes

There are various palettes available in AutoCAD. Palettes are special windows that can docked, floating
and made to collapse when not in use. You do not have to close palettes in order to work with graphic
data on screen. Most palettes support transparency (with proper hardware support) to allow them to
remain on screen during AutoCAD commands.

Command Line

The command line is a palette where you can type in command names and/or command responses, and
the view the history of both. If the command line is docked, it has a fixed number of visible lines.
Floating command line palettes can expand when needed to show you more data. The F2 key in both
cases will toggle open/closed, a larger command line history window.

Tool Palette

Tool Palettes contain buttons to insert blocks, execute commands, create hatches, just to name a few
items. Users are free to customize the content.

Sheet Set Manager

The Sheet Set Manager is a tool that allows you to organize sheets, streamline printing and archiving,
and automate annotation on drawing sheets among other uses

Quick View Drawings

Before File Tabs, there was Quick View Drawings. Although no longer enabled by default as a UI
element, this command still works from the command line (Command: QVD). It reveals a miniature
preview of each open document, and allows you to switch to another document. As the mouse is
hovered over a document preview, the layouts of that drawing appear, allowing you to switch directly to
a selected layout.
Quick View Layouts

Introduced as sort of replacement for Layout Tabs, Quick View Layouts has suffered the same fate as
Quick View Drawings. That is to say it is still part of the software, but hidden away. This command (QVL)
reveals miniature previews of all of the layouts of the current open document. Hover over a preview
enables the option to print it, or clicking on one switches to that layout.

InfoCenter

InfoCenter has been through a few iterations and name changes since it was introduced. It resides in the
Title Bar area, just to the left of the Windows control buttons. It contains a help search bar, Autodesk
A360 sign in, social media links, and a Help drop-down menu. Info Center has been linked to excessive
“phoning home” and is frequently disabled and hidden by many CAD managers. There is no UI method
of controlling the visibility of this element, it must be done in the registry, or with a 3rd party add-on
such as this one.

Screen Menu

The Screen Menu goes back to the beginnings of AutoCAD on DOS and UNIX. The Screen Menu is
composed of nested menus. Clicking on one entry usually replaces the screen menu contents with
another menu, until you get to a particular command. There is always a back and/or home choices too.
Most people do not know it still exists in AutoCAD 2018 today. To access it, you must know the secret
code.

Image Tile Menu

Last, but not least, unless you’ve been around for ~20 years or so, you have probably never seen an
Image Tile Menu. We were able to actually get one of these to work in AutoCAD 2018 as seen below.
These were largely replaced by Tool Palettes and Design Center around the AutoCAD 2000 era.