About Using Task-Based Workspaces

Workspaces are sets of menus, toolbars, palettes, and ribbon control panels that are grouped and organized so that you can work in a custom, task-oriented drawing environment.

When you use a workspace, only the menus, toolbars, and palettes that are relevant to a task are displayed. In addition, a workspace may automatically display the ribbon, a special palette with task-specific control panels.

You can easily switch between workspaces. The following task-based workspaces are already defined in the product:

• 2D Drafting & Annotation
• AutoCAD Classic

When you make changes to your drawing display (such as moving, hiding, or displaying a toolbar or a tool palette group) and you want to preserve the display settings for future use, you can save the current settings to a workspace.

Switch Workspaces

You can switch to another workspace whenever you need to work on a different task from the Workspace Switching button on the status bar at the bottom-right of the application window.

Find

Create or Change a Workspace

You can create your own workspaces and modify the default workspaces. To create or change a workspace, use either of the following methods:

• Display, hide, and rearrange your toolbars and windows, modify your ribbon settings, and then save the current workspace from the Workspace Switching button in the status bar, Workspaces toolbar or the Window menu, or use the WORKSPACE command.
• For more extensive changes, open the Customize User Interface dialog box to set up the workspace environment.

You can control the display order of your saved workspaces and other options in the Workspace Settings dialog box.