From the course: AutoCAD: 3D Modeling for Mechanical Designs

The New AutoCAD Interface - AutoCAD Tutorial

From the course: AutoCAD: 3D Modeling for Mechanical Designs

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The New AutoCAD Interface

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- [Instructor] In this particular course, we're going to be using the latest version of AutoCAD which is AutoCAD 2023. And you can see on the screen that we have a simple 3D model. It's a small plate with a little cylindrical upstand and a couple of holes in it. And you can see there that it is a whole 3D object. And if I hover over it you can see there the AutoCAD tells me it's a 3D solid on the layer objects. Now the new interface in AutoCAD is somewhat different to older versions of AutoCAD. The interface change quite dramatically around AutoCAD 2019, AutoCAD 2020, to this new dark mode effect and the new ribbon style with the new ribbon icons. So you'll notice on the ribbon now when you jump between the tabs all of the icons are very clean and very clear and that's all set up for HD and 4K monitors. And you can see there that everything is very self-explanatory now on the ribbon panels I'll jump back to the home tab now. Now, when you're working in the drawing area you can see that all of the technology is there as usual. You can see we've got the view cube over here which we'll be using a little bit during this course. And we've also got the navigation bar which comes up as standard. The command line is at the bottom of the screen as usual and you can still click on the command line and type in your commands if you want to. You'll notice up here we have the file tabs for the drawing files, as you can see there and we've also got the model tab and the layout tabs all set up down here as well, ready to be used in the regular way that you would use them in AutoCAD. Over here on the bottom right, we've got the usual AutoCAD status bar, and you can customize that by clicking on this little icon here and setting which drafting settings you want on the status bar at any given time. You then click on this little three bar icon here again and that menu disappears. So that's the interface that we're going to be using in AutoCAD 2023 for this particular course. Now, if you're using an older version of AutoCAD, let's say, for example, AutoCAD 2013, the interface will look different. So just be aware that the new AutoCAD interface is different to older versions. Another thing in the interface that we're going to be using is workspaces. They're available down here on the status bar. If I click on this little cog here, you can see we've got various workspaces available. The default workspace for 2D in AutoCAD is drafting and annotation. You can see that ticked there, and we're using that in 2D at the moment. If I wanted to go into 3D modeling though I'd select the 3D modeling workspace, and you'll notice that the ribbon changes accordingly with all of my 3D tools. So you'll notice we've got different ribbon tabs with solid, surface, mesh, et cetera. The home tab has some similar panels on it such as draw, a modify there and also your layers over here. But you'll notice you've got other tools as well for 3D modeling such as the modeling panel, the mesh panel, and the solid editing panel. We'll be jumping in and out of those workspaces in this course because we're going to be looking at 3D modeling for mechanical design in AutoCAD. So just be aware that we're working with a different interface in AutoCAD 2023 and also different workspaces in AutoCAD 2023 as well.

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