Le Tour de AutoCAD 2012 - AutoCAD 2012 - page 44

KeyTips — which work in much the same way. In Figure 2-11, I've just pressed the Alt
key. If I now tap the A key, the Annotate tab will open with a new set of KeyTips, and I
can keep tapping the keys to execute a specific command.
Figure 2-11: Hold down the Alt key to display a kazillion KeyTips.
Keeping tabs on palettes
Palettes are refined (well-mannered) versions of dialog boxes. Unlike regular dialog
boxes, which insist on your undivided attention as long as they're open, palettes stay
discreetly in the background as you carry on with other tasks. AutoCAD still has many
dialog boxes, but over the past several releases, quite a few former dialog boxes have
been replaced by palettes.
AutoCAD 2012 contains more than a dozen palettes (more than a half-dozen in AutoCAD
LT). Unless noted otherwise, you can open any of these palettes from the Palettes panel
of the View tab. The more commonly used palettes are
Properties, DesignCenter, and Content Explorer: These palettes are used to con-
trol object properties and find and display named objects (layers, blocks, and so
on), and copy them between drawings. I cover the first two in Chapter 6.
Tool Palettes: Each tool palette holds content (drawing symbols and hatch pat-
terns) and/or commands (not regular AutoCAD commands — what would be the
point? — but macros that make commands do specific things) instead of paints.
You can create your own tool palettes, but the ones that come with AutoCAD con-
tain dozens of symbols you can drag into your drawing — check 'em out!
Sheet Set Manager: Provides tools for managing all of a project's drawings as a
sheet set. I don't cover sheet sets in AutoCAD 2012 For Dummies .
External References: Used to attach external files to the current drawing; file types
include raster images, Drawing Web Format (DWF, or DWFx) files, PDF files, Mi-