AutoCAD 2018: Modifications to the AutoCAD display

By Martin Phelps

The AutoCAD display (as shown in Figure 1), shows a great deal of information so it can be more productive and less distracting to remove any non-essential items.

Figure 1.

When producing 2D drawing, the components relating to the 3D side of AutoCAD could be removed.

So the “View Cube” and “View Port Controls” could both be removed on a temporary or permanent basis, however I do tend to leave the “WCS” icon in place.

The permanent option is via the “3D Modelling” tab of the “Options” dialogue box. Uncheck “2D Wireframe Visual Style” and “Display the Viewport Controls”, as in Figure 2.

Figure 2.

Alternatively to turn the “View Cube” off in the current drawing, select “View Cube” button in the “Viewports Tools” panel of the “View” tab, as shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3.

Since most users tend to use the scroll wheel of the mouse to “Zoom”, “Pan” and “Zoom Extents” the “Navbar” could also be removed.

The next item that may be changed is the “Ribbon” menu, by default the complete “Ribbon” is displayed, as in Figure 2.

Figure 2.

This can be reduced in size, to suit the way user wishes to work. To change the ribbon menu appearance, select the arrow at the end of the “Ribbon Tabs”.

There are three other options. “Minimise to Panel Buttons”, to access the commands hover over the large icon, as in Figure 3.

Figure 3.

“Minimise to Panel Titles” reduces the size of “Ribbon”, again access to the commands is by hovering over the relevant “Panel Title”, as shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4.

The final option “Minimise to Tabs” collapses the “Ribbon” even further, but this time to access the commands ,it’s a left click on the relevant “Tab”, this will display the entire tab, as in Figure 5.

Figure 5.

To remove all menu’s and dialogue boxes, press CRTL+0, this is a bit extreme but it does provide maximum screen area for the drawing.

The Ribbon can also be “Undocked” and placed to the left or right sides of the screen, as shown in Figure 6. Again using the options described above.

Figure 6.

The final change to the display is to move the command line to the top of the screen, since AutoCAD is very much command line driven, if the command line is at the bottom of the screen it’s very easy to overlook a sub command, but with the command line at the top of the screen it’s in the same location as the ribbon, so the users view is automatically drawn to the command line, it also allows quick access to subcommands since they can be selected from the command line. Figure 7 shows the “Ribbon” docked to the left side of the screen, and the command line placed at the top.

Figure 7.

Figure 8 shows the Ribbon in its default location and the Command line placed below it.

Figure 8.

Once the changes have been made, the new settings can be saved as a “Work Space”.