Introduction to the AutoCAD 2009 Ribbon

by Donnie Gladfelter on February 13, 2008

in AutoCAD 2009,AutoCAD 2009,Videos

Last Tuesday MSNBC, CNN, and every other American news outlet dubbed February 5, 2008 as “Super Tuesday”.  Seeing that Virginia (where I live) wasn’t included in the Super Tuesday primaries; Super Tuesday wasn’t much different than any other Tuesday.  Fast-forward a week to February 12, 2008, and you get what I call a Super Tuesday!  Autodesk had some pretty exciting announcements to make.  No Carl Bass (Autodesk CEO) isn’t running for president.  Instead, what Autodesk is about to do is release their line of 2009 products, and you know what that means.  An all new AutoCAD, Civil 3D, and the many other Autodesk products!

So what can we expect in AutoCAD 2009?  Well the list is somewhat long.  If you would like to see the complete list, hop over to Shaan Hurley’s Between The Lines Blog, and check out his The 2009 Products Including AutoCAD 2009 post.  Stay tuned here at The CAD Geek Blog for some indepth looks at the new features within both AutoCAD 2009 and AutoCAD Civil 3D 2009.

The most notable of the scary new features is the all-new Ribbon.  Microsoft Office 2007 was the first mainstream product to employ this new GUI.  Autodesk in their 2009 release of AutoCAD have followed suit with their version of the Ribbon.  At the end of the day, the Ribbon is really nothing more than the new Dashboard, but with some twists.  Below you will find a quick video introducing how to use the new Ribbon in AutoCAD 2009.


Tagged as: AutoCAD 2009, features, Video

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  • Larry Emmert

    I went to a Central Illinois AUGI session last night and we were discussing AutoCAD 2009. Some are still based in AutoCAD 2006 (myself included) and we discussed the different changes. The Ribbon was the main discussion point and that Office users should have no problem. My main concern is getting everyone up to speed were I work. Other desktops in my office have 2004 LT and the company is looking into upgrading but its a slow process.

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  • http://www.thecadgeek.com Donnie Gladfelter

    Adam – I assume you too are a long-time CAD user, who learned CAD before the advent of toolbar buttons. In my experience, most power users are keyboard commandos, down to the customized acad.pgp file. On the other hand, look to the way CAD is taught in the classroom. There, most teachers focus more on the toolbar buttons than command line. Although personally partial to the command line, I can see valid arguments on both sides.

    There are a great deal of visual learners, and toolbar buttons tap into that learning style. When I look to the users I support, I tend to find a large portion of them using toolbars. Fundamentally, it comes down to the way they learned it in school, and that’s what works for them. While I am partial to the command line myself, said users are still productive and profitable, so how can one argue with that?

  • http://thecadgeek.com/ Donnie Gladfelter

    Adam – I assume you too are a long-time CAD user, who learned CAD before the advent of toolbar buttons. In my experience, most power users are keyboard commandos, down to the customized acad.pgp file. On the other hand, look to the way CAD is taught in the classroom. There, most teachers focus more on the toolbar buttons than command line. Although personally partial to the command line, I can see valid arguments on both sides.

    There are a great deal of visual learners, and toolbar buttons tap into that learning style. When I look to the users I support, I tend to find a large portion of them using toolbars. Fundamentally, it comes down to the way they learned it in school, and that’s what works for them. While I am partial to the command line myself, said users are still productive and profitable, so how can one argue with that?

  • Adam

    Does anyone even click the icons anyway? If so it seems awfully inefficient. All the commands are the same, so just type them in as usual and there’s no adoption period.

  • Adam

    Does anyone even click the icons anyway? If so it seems awfully inefficient. All the commands are the same, so just type them in as usual and there’s no adoption period.

  • http://www.thecadgeek.com Donnie Gladfelter

    Kurt – AutoCAD 2009 does ship with a “Classic” workspace. That will return things to “normal”. Now if you want to use the Ribbon, but still have your menus too; click on the name of your Workspace from the CUI command. From there you can adjust the properties of your Workspace, including Menu bar On/Off, and Model/Layout Tabs On/Off.

  • http://thecadgeek.com/ Donnie Gladfelter

    Kurt – AutoCAD 2009 does ship with a “Classic” workspace. That will return things to “normal”. Now if you want to use the Ribbon, but still have your menus too; click on the name of your Workspace from the CUI command. From there you can adjust the properties of your Workspace, including Menu bar On/Off, and Model/Layout Tabs On/Off.

  • Kurt Widmer

    Where are the old pull down menus across the top. I couldn’t even find the plot command until I found it when clicking on the big A.

  • Kurt Widmer

    Where are the old pull down menus across the top. I couldn’t even find the plot command until I found it when clicking on the big A.

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