by John Flanagan
Introduction
One of the most useful AutoCAD features is the amount of control available to you over the user interface (UI). This blog will outline ways to maximise the usable drawing area for 2D drawings.
You can maximise your working space and reduce the UI complexity by hiding or removing rarely used controls. Here are some options you can consider if you're working on 2D drawings.
Clean Screen
- Press Ctrl+0 (zero) to quickly maximise the drawing area.
- Press Ctrl+0 again to restore the previous state.
This is very useful to get a large view of your drawing.
Control the Ribbon Display
The ribbon takes up a significant area in the application window. Instead of turning it off completely, you can cycle through several display modes.
1. Click the up arrow repeatedly to cycle through several ribbon display modes.
2. Then, click the down arrow just to the right and choose Minimise to Tabs.
3. Click one of the ribbon tabs. Notice that the ribbon is temporarily restored until you start a
command.
Note: To restore the full ribbon, click the up arrow again.
4. Right-click any ribbon tab to choose which tabs you want to show or hide. In this case,
clear Parametric to hide that tab.
Note: If you want to hide certain panels in the current tab, you can choose the Show Panels option.
Control the Quick Access Toolbar
When the ribbon is minimised, access to the tools on the Layers panel is not as convenient. However, you can add the Layer drop-down list to the Quick Access toolbar instead.
On the Quick Access toolbar, click the Customise down arrow and choose Layer.
Here's the result. The drawing layers are added to the Quick Access toolbar.
Control the Start Tab
Not everyone uses the Start tab.
- To hide the Start tab, enter STARTMODE at the Command prompt and set its value to 0 (off).
Dock Important Palettes
Two of the most used palettes are the Properties palette and the Layer Properties Manager. Docking these two palettes together with the Auto-hide option gives you instant roll-over access.
1. Display the Properties palette.
2. On its title bar, click the Properties button as shown.
3. Choose the arrowed options:
Rolling over or off this palette provides fast, temporary access when needed.
4. Repeat this process for the Layer Properties Manager palette, docking it to the right-side
of the application window.
You can resize the width of a palette when it's docked. Hover over the edge of the palette to see a small grip.
Hide the UCS Icon, the View Cube and the Navigation Bar
The user coordinate system is useful in some 2D drawings, and it's essential for 3D modelling. If you don't use the UCS frequently, you can easily hide it. The same is true for the View Cube control and the Navigation bar.
Click the View tab on the ribbon. Then click the UCS Icon, ViewCube and Navigation Bar controls to toggle their visibility.
Hide the Viewport Controls
The viewport controls are used primarily for 3D modelling.
Enter VPCONTROL at the Command prompt and set it to Off.
Remove an Unneeded Layout Tab
Reducing the user interface to the minimum that you normally use also applies to layout tabs. The only reason that the second layout tab is displayed in the lower-left corner is to demonstrate that you can create more than one layout.
If you're not using this additional layout, right-click the Layout2 tab and choose Delete.
Note: You can reduce the number of times that you need to delete unnecessary layouts by removing them from your drawing template files.
Control the Status Bar
The status bar includes common settings and controls. Turning off the controls you don't need is super easy.
- Click the Customisation icon on the right end of the status bar.
Clear any items from the list that you seldom use.
Once set, your customised UI settings are stored in the Windows registry, or for drawing-specific settings, in individual drawing files (DWG) or drawing template files (DWT).