AutoCAD basic tutorials – understanding the Application Menu, part 2

Welcome back to my AutoCAD basic tutorials series. In this article, I show you how to use the Application Menu. This is a shortcut button stashed full of useful administrative commands; your one-stop shop for all items of an administrative nature.

We’d left off talking about how to display the recent documents, with small/large icons, or small/large images. We’d selected the Large Image display, and that’s what you see below. Now, let’s hover over the document image. A preview window appears, showing the full file path, as shown below:

AutoCAD Basic Tutorials – how to wield the administrative potential of the application menu!

Figure 01 – document preview when you mouse over the document image or icon.

Now, take a look at the bottom of the application menu. Let’s click on the Options button. I’ve highlighted it in yellow below. Left click on it:

AutoCAD Basic Tutorials – how to wield the administrative potential of the application menu!

Figure 02 – the Options window can be accessed via the Options button at the bottom of the Application Menu.

Let’s go to the Open & Save tab of the Options window:

AutoCAD Basic Tutorials – how to wield the administrative potential of the application menu!

Figure 03 – The Open & save tab of the Options window.

Take a look at the File Open option on the right side of this window. At the time when you open a file, you can choose how many files you can display. You can choose any value from zero to nine, so a maximum of 9 documents can display:

AutoCAD Basic Tutorials – how to wield the administrative potential of the application menu!

Figure 04 – Enter a value in the number field, from 0 to 9.

Now, in the Application Menu number field, you can enter any value from zero to 50. By default, the value is 9. So, you can show as many as 50 recent documents in the application menu window. I’m going to enter a value of 20 here:

AutoCAD Basic Tutorials – how to wield the administrative potential of the application menu!

Figure 05 – you can manually input the number of recently used files to show in the Application Menu, any number from zero to fifty.

Then, click Apply and OK.

AutoCAD Basic Tutorials – how to wield the administrative potential of the application menu!

Figure 06 – Apply and OK at the bottom of the Options window.

Alrighty, let’s click File from the standard menu stip:

AutoCAD Basic Tutorials – how to wield the administrative potential of the application menu!

Figure 07 – the File menu command on the standard menu strip.

The menu flyout displays below. There are many of the same commands, in fact, that we see in the Application menu. At the bottom of this menu flyout are the 9 documents we’d opted for in Figure 4. They are displaying as small icons.

AutoCAD Basic Tutorials – how to wield the administrative potential of the application menu!

Figure 08 – the File menu shows up to 9 recently opened documents.

Now, let’s open up the Application menu again. Remember I said I was going to plug in 20 docs here? Well, that’s what displays in the list of recent documents–20 of my last used docs, and those which I’ve pinned down will show at the top. We’re able to easily scroll up and down the list of documents. Click the arrow on top of the list, then roll your mouse wheel up and down to scroll through the document list.

AutoCAD Basic Tutorials – how to wield the administrative potential of the application menu!

Figure 09 – the recent documents display in the Application menu holds up to 50 documents.

See the arrow I’ve got highlighted in yellow below? Click this to collapse the list of recent documents.

AutoCAD Basic Tutorials – how to wield the administrative potential of the application menu!

Figure 10 – Click the arrow highlighted in yellow to collapse the list of recent documents.

Here’s what the application menu flyout looks like with the recent documents collapsed, after I click on the highlighted arrow. To expand and once again display the list, just click the arrow a second time.

AutoCAD Basic Tutorials – how to wield the administrative potential of the application menu!

Figure 11 – The collapsed recent documents. Use the highlighted arrow to collapse and expand the list.

This concludes part 2 of this AutoCAD basic tutorials series on using the application menu button. Stay tuned for part 3. If you’re interested in learning AutoCAD, please purchase my course at http://www.video-tutorials.net/product-category/autocad-video-tutorials/. It’s suitable for AutoCAD beginners, and takes you through to high-intermediate AutoCAD functions like 3D design and VBA. If you’d like to see some video samples, please visit my youtube channel at http://www.youtube.com/videotutorials2. Here is a link to one of my AutoCAD training for beginners series: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLx-VY2mDlK2GNtcL0Y7qSBcDlL9wkTvA-

Thanks! Kind regards, Rosanna D – VTN  www.video-tutorials.net