- We're staying in our interface dot DWG file.
And we're going to take a look now
at the command line in AutoCAD.
That's this one right down here at the bottom of the screen
where it says type of command.
If I hover over it, it highlights.
And when I click in it, I get a little cursor.
So if I type in something like line
which is a very commonly used command in AutoCAD
you'll notice that I get a suggestion menu pop up.
So it's letting me know all the different commands
that have the word line in it.
Now it's pretty obvious that the one that I want is line
and it's at the top of the list.
If you look at it in the suggestion menu list
and then look top left of your AutoCAD screen
in the draw panel, you can see the icon there
for the line command in the draw panel as well.
And you can see the icon is next
to the word line in the suggestion menu on the command line.
So if I now press enter, you'll see
now that I get specify first point.
If I come into the drawing area though, I've also
got specify first point near my little cross hair there.
That's dynamic input we'll cover that in a moment.
I'm just going to hit escape a couple
of times now just to cancel that command.
And you'll notice there
that the command line says cancel as well.
If you ever get into a command that you don't want to use
just press escape a couple of times
and it will cancel the command for you.
Now, the actual command line is movable.
I can click on these little bars here, where the dots are
and I can put the command line wherever I want it to go.
I normally dock mine down here, bottom of the screen.
And it's just the quickest and easiest place
to obviously dock it.
Don't click here on this one that closes the command line.
Don't ever close your command line.
You always want it there
because you never know when you need to keep an eye
on the input in a command in AutoCAD.
You've also got settings here.
I can click here on the little span
and customize it and I can change the transparency
of it and the options and input settings and so on.
There's all different settings I can fool around with there.
Again, I've never changed the settings of my command line
in AutoCAD ever in my thirty years plus of experience.
I just use the default settings.
So as I said
the command line is there to type a command in.
So I click there and I can type a command in
but it's also very useful
for checking previous commands and previous input.
I can click on this little arrow here at the end
command history, and there's all the information there.
So you can see there that I've got all the different
workspaces. Can you see that there?
Ws current is when I was changing the workspaces earlier.
You'll also notice there's some cancels there where
I've hit escape to cancel a command, but you can see there
where I've typed in the line command, and it's prompted me
for that first point of the line.
And you can then see cancel again
when I hit escape to cancel the line command.
To close that again, I can just click
on the little arrow there.
You can also use the function key F two on your keyboard.
If you wish to expand the command line like I just did.
But that's the command line in a nutshell in AutoCAD.
And it's the old way of typing in commands.
I used to type in every single AutoCAD command
in full back in the day when I first started using AutoCAD.
The command line was my go-to tool for operating AutoCAD.
Now we've got a mouse, we've got a ribbon
we've got a drawing area
we've got tabs and icons and so on.
So things have changed
as we've moved through the development of AutoCAD
but the command line never
ever close it, never, ever change it.
It's always useful.
And it's always good just to have that docked
at the bottom of the screen, just in case you need it.