About Setting Up the Drawing Area

You can adjust the color and display schemes used in the application and drawing windows, and control the behavior of general features such as grip editing behavior.

Many of the settings are available from shortcut menus and the Application Preferences dialog box. Some user interface elements, such as the presence and location of menu items, can be specified and saved using the Customize dialog box.

Palettes can be docked or floating. You can auto-hide your docked palettes to increase your drawing area. Auto-hide affects all docked palettes. The title bar for each docked palette remains visible. Mouse over the title bar for the palette you want to show, and the palette automatically expands.

Some settings affect how you work in the drawing area:

• Color Scheme (Application Preferences dialog box, Look & Feel tab). You specify a dark or light color theme for the overall user interface. The settings affect the window frame background, status bar, title bar, and palettes.
• Background Colors (Application Preferences dialog box, Look & Feel tab). You specify the background colors used in the Model and named layouts.
• 3D Background, Sky, and Horizon Colors. You specify the colors for various 3D settings for parallel and perspective views.
• UCS Icon and ViewCube (Application Preferences dialog box, Look & Feel tab). You can specify the display options for the UCS icon and ViewCube in model space.
• UCS Icon Style, Size, and Color (UCS Icon dialog box). You can control the appearance of the UCS icon in model space and paper space.
• Full Screen. You can expand the application to full screen mode. Press Ctrl-0 to turn full screen on and off.

Tooltips

Several types of tooltips provide pop-up information for interaction with toolbars, object snaps, and drafting operations.

Tooltips are displayed for tools on the Tool Sets and other palettes in the user interface. Hover the cursor over the control to display the tooltip.