Status bar - The AutoCAD Interface
[Narrarator] The status bar is where you control most of your drafting settings while you're working in an AutoCAD drawing. So we're still in the interface.dwg file and you'll find your status bar down here, bottom right of the screen there and you see there's various icons that are blue and various icons that are gray. Anything that is highlighted blue is on, so any of those drafting settings that are blue are on. So you'll notice at the moment that my Snap to drawing grid is on, my Polar Tracking is on, my Object Snap Tracking is on, my Object Snaps are on and also my annotation objects are showing as always on. Now, one of the things you'll notice when you use more recent versions of AutoCAD is that if I start typing a command, you'll see it appears next to the cross hair on the screen so there's the suggestion menu for what I've typed in which is 'line'; that is known as Dynamic Input. Now in newer versions of AutoCAD you're Dynamic Input is always on by default. I've just hit escape there to cancel the suggestion menu but you can not control your Dynamic Input Settings because it's not actually showing on the status bar. Now if you want a setting to show on the status bar and it's not there, you go to these three little lines in the corner: Customization. Click on it and you'll see a great big, long menu appear on the right hand side of the screen. Now I'm going to switch on my Coordinates like so, you'll see a tick appear next to it when I click on it and there's Dynamic Input. I'll also click on Dynamic Input, there's the little tick that appears next to it. I then go back down here to the little three lines, click on it again to close the menu. So you'll notice now I've got my Coordinates here there's my Coordinates there, and coming further along there's my Dynamic Input, which by default is always on, but more importantly I can now right click on that icon and go to my Dynamic Input Settings that will open my Drafting Settings dialogue box. This is where I can set up all of the settings for all of my Drafting Settings. So Snap and Grid, there's all the settings and it controls these two icons here. If I go to Polar Tracking, there's all the settings, there's my Polar Tracking there. Object Snap, there's the Snaps that are switched off and on and there's my Object Snaps there. Now you can utilize the Drafting Settings dialogue box for these which comes up with a right click on an icon on the status bar where you'll find some of the settings now. You can just simply click on the fly out arrow and there's my Object Snaps so I can switch on my Midpoint Snap like that, click on the arrow again and I'm back into my drawing like so. I can also control my Polar Tracking angles if I click there, I can switch on what Polar Tracking I want. Do I want increments of 90 degrees? Do I want increments of 45 degrees, for example? So you can see how the status bar is fundamental to your work in AutoCAD. It's all of your Drafting Settings, it's all of those little tools that you need off and on at any given time to create drawings effectively in AutoCAD while you work.