Monday, August 18, 2008

AutoCAD 2009 Quick Access Toolbar

Hello everyone, how's the weather in your area? In Colorado we've had a lot of really hot weather for the past few weeks, in the high 90's every day (like 35-37 C) but this past Saturday it rained. Saying "it rained" really doesn't give you a picture of it, it RAINED, it just poured - buckets of rain! It's been so dry here, we did badly need the rain - but why did the only day of rain have to be on the only day this summer I was helping with an outdoor art show?

If the new ribbon interface is affecting your life like a rainstorm, perhaps this little message will bring some sunshine back!
Specifically today I'm going to talk about the Quick Access Toolbar, which is the new toolbar that sits up on top of all the other ones, no matter what workspace you're using.
There are 3 things you see if you right-click on the Quick Access Toolbar, and all of them are best found that way; 1. Customizing the Quick Access Toolbar, 2. Showing your old menus, and 3. Turning on toolbars.
Yes, you can even turn on toolbars & menus when you're in the new workspace with the ribbons! You can have it all!
Do you remember I said I wanted "Save as" in my quick Access toolbar? Well, look at the picture - I got it, and it was super simple.

1. Customize
Right click on the Quick Access Toolbar, pick "Customize..." and a menu pops up. Once you start typing in the search bar, every command containing those letters will show in the box at the bottom. Once you find the one you want, put your mouse on the icon and drag the button up onto the Quick Access Toolbar, and there it is. However, then you need to save your workspace so it stays; these customizations are saved per Workspace. (I blogged about Workspaces, you can look that up)








2. Menu Pulldowns

If you hate going through the Menu Browser for commands that used to be on your pulldown menus, you can get them all back by right-clicking on the Quick Access Toolbar and pick that option.






3. Toolbars

If you want to see a toolbar, but you like the ribbons and don't want to regress to AutoCAD Classic Workspace, you can. Right click on the Quick Access Toolbar and choose "toolbars". Just like before, you'll see a list of all your toolbars, and checking any one of them will turn it on. You can dock toolbars on the sides, or just under your ribbon, and you can create a new named workspace to save this arrangement of ribbons and toolbars.



You can arrange these tools any way you want to!
Is it my imagination, or did the sun just come out?

1 comment:

Pipa Santos said...

Hello, i Have a little doubt about the quick access toolbar that i just expecting you could help me. I've just opened by cad2009 and the quick access toolbar is missing. How can i bring it back to it's place?
Thank you very much..

Filipa from Portugal