Drawing Windows. Autodesk AUTOSKETCH 8

To use the keyboard, press ALT and type the underlined letter in the menu name, then the underlined letter in the menu item’s name. If there is a cascading menu, you must type another letter. You can also use arrow keys to move through menu items, and press ENTER to select one. Pressing ESC backs out of the menu items one level at a time.

There are single-key or key combination shortcuts for certain frequently-used menu items. Each menu lists available shortcut keys to the right of the item’s name.

You can use the techniques for choosing menu items in combination. For instance, you could press ALT+D to choose Draw, then use the down arrow to choose Line, then use the mouse to click Single.

Drawing Windows

The large area in the center of the AutoSketch screen is the workspace. This area contains drawing windows for each open drawing. The amount of memory in your computer limits the number of open drawings.

The title bar of each drawing window displays the name of the drawing it contains. When a drawing window contains a new, unsaved drawing, the title bar displays the word Drawing followed by a number that reflects the number of new drawings created in the current AutoSketch session.

Drawing Windows

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The active window contains the drawing on which you are currently working and is the only one in which you can make changes. Normally, the title bar of the active window is displayed in a color different from those of other windows. Clicking a drawing window makes it active. You can resize, minimize, maximize, and close each drawing window independently.

Page

The large rectangle that appears in the drawing window when you load a drawing is the page. The shaded bands along each edge of the page are the

margins. You can draw in the margins and off of the page, but any part of a drawing that falls in this area does not normally appear on scaled output.

AutoSketch reads the default margins from the default Windows printer driver. For more information, see “Setting the Page Size” on page 51 or “Setting the Margins” on page 54.

The pattern of lines, crosses, or dots on the page is called the reference grid. It has three components:

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Snap grid

Major grid

Minor grid

The snap grid is invisible. It is the grid to which points “snap” when you use

Gridpoint snap. The major and minor grids are comprised of lines, crosses, or dots, and appear onscreen for reference only. They do not appear on printed output. You can also create guidelines whose purpose is similar to the reference grid. Guidelines are lines (which extend infinitely) or circles to which you can snap points to help you draw. For more information, see the chapter titled “Customizing the Grid,” which begins on page 59.

When you create a new drawing using the Standard Blank Drawing template,

AutoSketch automatically assigns a page size and orientation based on the default printer. If you prefer a different size or orientation, you can redefine the page using Page Setup on the File menu. If you choose a page size that is larger than the paper for which your printer is configured, AutoSketch automatically tiles the drawing.

Tiling is the process of printing a drawing on multiple sheets of paper. Several factors affect tiling, including page size, page orientation, and margin settings. You can display the tiling pattern onscreen by checking the Page Tiling check box on the Appearance page of the View Options dialog box.

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Chapter 3 Screen Layout