As illustrated by my blogging frequency, the last several weeks have been incredibly busy. During that time I had the chance to speak with a large number of AutoCAD (and its many vertical flavors like Civil 3D) users, and answer some of their burning questions. As you might imagine, I fielded a diverse range of questions, many of which I intend to use as inspiration for a number of upcoming blog posts. Certainly one of my most asked questions was some derivative of “Where can I find ___ command in AutoCAD 2010?”
My answer certainly wasn’t earth shattering, but it was certainly a huge time saver for many of the users I spoke with. The Application Menu (the big “A” icon in the upper left corner of the screen, or “C” for Civil 3D users) has an incredibly useful search feature. Let’s assume for a moment you’re having a hard time locating the OFFSET command. The tooltips in AutoCAD are certainly good enough that you could hover over a seemingly infinite number of icons to figure out which each one does. On the other hand you can earn yourself another coffee break by using the Application Menu’s search function.
- Click on the Application Menu
- Enter “Offset” in the search box atop the Application Menu.
- Matches for your query display within the Application Menu. Clicking on a match will launch the respective command. Since you probably won’t want to search for the OFFSET command every time you need to use it, pay attention to the result itself. On the left you’ll find the same icon used within the ribbon itself displayed. With that knowledge, you can use the text on the right to make a mental note of where the OFFSET command is located. In this case the OFFSET command can be found on the Home tab within the Modify panel.
Note: You can use this procedure to locate commands within vertical applications such as Civil 3D, but the results won’t always guide you to the correct ribbon. For help on finding the location of Civil 3D commands on the ribbon, use the “Where is my Command?” tool found in the Civil 3D help file.
