It would appear that AutoCAD 2009 is now shipping. I intend to hold off on any further comments until I get my hands on the shipping product, which I expect to be fairly soon. In the meantime, maybe have a look over the 24 AutoCAD 2009 Prequel posts and see if there’s anything you missed.
If [...]

You may be used to accessing pull-down menus with Alt-key combinations, e.g. Alt+F to get at the File menu. You can still use those keystrokes to get at menus in AutoCAD 2009, whether or not the pull-down menus are in place. If the pull-downs are visible (MENUBAR=1), they are given priority over the Menu Browser. [...]

Like Recent Documents, the Menu Browser pane also stores a Recent Actions list.

Like Recent Documents, the length of this list defaults to 9 and can be set to up to 50 in Options.
Similarly, you can pin actions in place to prevent them slipping off the end.
Unlike the command line recall (up-arrow) method of retrieving recently [...]

One more feature that’s crammed into the Menu Browser pane’s limited space is the Open Documents list. This allows you to switch between the drawings you currently have open. It has a similar interface to the Recent Documents list, including the persistently pale preview:

Unlike Recent Documents, the filenames are displayed in the correct case, although [...]

Another thing you will find lurking under the big red A is the Recent Document list. This is a mixed bag too, but most of it is good. It differs from the traditional list that still lives under the File menu in several ways:

Although the default maximum list length is 9 items, you can [...]

So if the Menu Browser isn’t much use for browsing menus, what is it good for? Searching menus, for one thing. Let’s say you’re a very occasional 3D user trying to make a 3D model look pretty. You want to access commands for placing lights, putting the sun in the right place, and changing visual [...]

You have undoubtedly noticed the large red A in the top right corner of the AutoCAD window. Personally, I don’t like the look of it. The concept is rather Fisher-Price and the execution is poor. No competent graphic designer would align the top of the red A exactly with the top of its surrounding button [...]

There’s one screen-based user interface mechanism in AutoCAD 2009 that you probably won’t see bragged about in Autodesk marketing materials. That’s a shame, because it has some strong points:

It can be docked on the side of the screen or allowed to float free.
While floating, it can be resized to the desired width and height.
If [...]

Testing performance under Vista can be an interesting experience. The trouble is, Vista tries to improve its performance by observing what you do and caching it for later use in case you do it again. This leads to something akin to the observer effect in science, where the very act of observing something has an [...]

One of the things I like least about AutoCAD 2009 (at least in Release Candidate form) is that I find it very “sticky”. That is, I find myself having to wait for an instant here, then again there, yet again over there. Most of my testing has been on a middle-aged Pentium 4 (3.0 GHz [...]

I have a lot of posts about AutoCAD and a few about grammar, but I expect this will be the only post I ever make that combines the subjects.
Autodesk founder John Walker, a very prominent figure in AutoCAD’s history, has written an article about the correct use of the apostrophe. While I enjoyed it, I [...]

In a comment on my Five More Simple Tips for AutoCAD post, Jeremy had some questions about the Oops command. I thought I would explain the command in more detail in another post so more people will see it.
The first thing to understand is that Oops varies from Undo/U in that it only reverses those [...]

You may have noticed that the default AutoCAD background is an off-white shade. In a comment, Tim asked if this is the same as the Block Editor background. No, not quite. This image shows the different backgrounds and some linework, with black as a comparison:

Paper space is pure white (Red, Green, Blue is 255,255,255), Model [...]

I’m interested in people’s perceptions of the forthcoming AutoCAD release. Based on what you’ve seen so far, how good a release do you think it will be? Please speculate using the poll on the right. If you feel the poll doesn’t give you the opportunity to adequately express yourself, feel free to add a [...]

For many 3D users of AutoCAD, the ViewCube is likely to be the most useful new thing in AutoCAD 2009. There are a couple of problems with it, at least in the Release Candidate:

It does not work in 2D wireframe mode (which is, paradoxically, where 90% of my 3D work is done). You need to [...]

How do you turn the new screen elements on and off using the keyboard? How about the not-so-new ones? See this table:

Element
On
Off
Toggle

Advanced Render Settings
RPPREF
RPPREFCLOSE
 

Clean Screen
CLEANSCREENON
CLEANSCREENOFF
Ctrl+0

Command line
COMMANDLINE
COMMANDLINEHIDE
Ctrl+9

dbConnect
DBCONNECT
DBCCLOSE
Ctrl+6

DesignCenter
ADCENTER
ADCCLOSE
Ctrl+2

Layer palette
LAYER
LAYERCLOSE
 

Lights
LIGHTLIST
LIGHTLISTCLOSE
 

Markup Set Manager
MARKUP
MARKUPCLOSE
Ctrl+7

Materials
MATERIALS
MATERIALSCLOSE
 

Menu bar
MENUBAR 1
MENUBAR 0
 

NavCube
NAVCUBEDISPLAY 1
NAVCUBEDISPLAY 0
 

Properties palette
PROPERTIES
PROPERTIESCLOSE
Ctrl+1

Quick calc
QUICKCALC
QCCLOSE
Ctrl+8

Ribbon
RIBBON
RIBBONCLOSE
 

Rollover tool tips
ROLLOVERTIPS 1
ROLLOVERTIPS 0
 

Sheet Set Manager
SHEETSET
SHEETSETHIDE
Ctrl+4

Status bar
STATUSBAR 1
STATUSBAR 0
 

Status bar
tray icons
TRAYICONS 1
TRAYICONS [...]

This video shows how the AutoCAD 2009 vertical Ribbon behaves when it is docked on one side. The labels explain what is going on.

The main thing that used to drive me batty with the Dashboard was the way in which expanding one panel would contract another. The vertical Ribbon doesn’t do that, it leaves panels [...]

More simple AutoCAD tips, as promised:

If you erase some objects, draw a few things and then want your erased objects back without losing the things you drew in the meantime, enter OOPS rather than undoing the commands.
At any Select objects: prompt, you can select using a triangle, non-orthogonal rectangle or other odd shapes, by entering [...]

Dude, Dashboard’s dead. Defunct. Done. AutoCAD 2009 replaced the Dashboard with the Ribbon. If you type in the DASHBOARD or DASHBOARDCLOSE commands, they are just converted to the RIBBON and RIBBONCLOSE commands, which turn the Ribbon on and off.
If you’re a fan of the Dashboard (and I never was), there is good and bad news. [...]

As my forced change to a different blog theme (thanks IE7) has meant the demise of my random AutoCAD tip feature, you may as well have the tips in a blog post instead. Here are the first five. These are fairly simple tips that apply to all recent releases. You probably know most of them, [...]