Michael’s Corner

Michael's Corner is a monthly publication written by Michael E. Beall, Autodesk Authorized Author and peripatetic AutoCAD trainer. Michael travels all over the USA, bringing his fantastic experience and great understanding of AutoCAD to his clients. Michael's Corner brings together many of the tips, tricks and methods developed during these training sessions for the benefit of all users.

Michael's Corner provides something for every AutoCAD user. Every month, a number of articles cover a wide range of topics, suitable for users at all levels, including "The Basics" for those just starting out. Essentially, the aim of Michael's Corner is to help all AutoCAD users work smarter and faster.

This month…

From the Vault

Originally published July 2009

Ideas for Personalizing the Ribbon

Word to the Wise: Workspace

The condition of the Ribbon is stored in the current workspace. I would suggest, therefore, creating a workspace to save how you currently have your drawing environment setup. After creating a ‘status quo’ workspace (what David Watson very wisely referred to as a "fall back strategy" in his coverage of the ribbon last July), save another workspace to be your Ribbon ‘playground’.

For detailed coverage on creating a Workspace, see Michael's Corner, May 2009.

Ribbon Terms

Heidi Hewitt has a wonderfully succinct phrase to define the mechanics of the Ribbon:

"Each tab contains multiple panels, and each panel contains multiple tools."

Tabs:AutoCAD 2010 has 8 tabs in the Ribbon, as shown in the above figure. AutoCAD 2009 has 6 tabs: Home, Blocks & References, Annotate, Tools, View, and Output.

Panels: The panels are the large parts of the Ribbon. This figure shows the Text panel for the Annotate tab.

The black triangle beside the tab title [A2010], indicates the panel can be expanded to display more tools. The arrow in the corner typically designates a Style dialog box.

Tools: The Tools are the commands on the panels. If the tool has a black triangle (as shown for the Multiline Text tool on the A2010 Annotate panel), that tool can be expanded to display additional tools.

End of Vocabulary Lesson.

Favorite Feature

The Minimize arrow. There are three settings to the Minimize arrow: Minimize to Panel Titles (my favorite condition), Minimize to Tabs, and Show Full Ribbon.

When the Ribbon is minimized to Panel Titles, you have access to the Ribbon panels, but they're not all displayed at once. When you hover over the desired panel group (as shown in the figure for the Palettes panel of the View tab), then the tools are displayed.

Ribbon Management via the Shortcut Menu

The Plot command can easily be accessed in the Quick Access Toolbar (the panel beside the big red "A"), so let's turn off the "Output" tab of the Ribbon.

Right-click on any element of the Ribbon and you get a shortcut menu with two very important items: Tabs and Panels.

At this point, you've probably made the mental leap on where to go from here, but here's one more insight: The Panels are displayed for the current Tab.

Parting Comment

Save your Workspace using Workspace SwitchingSave Current Asworkspace name click the name in the dropdown list.

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