AutoCAD Civil 3D Surveying Quick Tips and Tricks: Menu Bar
August 6, 2009 in AutoCAD Civil 3D, AutoCAD Civil 3D Surveying Quick Tips and Tricks, Business, Continuing Education, Land Surveying, Surveying Software by EricColburn
AutoCAD Civil 3D Surveying Quick Tips and Tricks: Menu Bar
If you’ve upgraded from previous versions of AutoCAD Civil 3D 2010 one of the first things you’ll notice is the Ribbon interface. The Ribbon interface of process-oriented grouped commands and functions may take some getting used to at first, but once you start using it I think many of you will like the Ribbon.
For those who just plain dislike (nicer than saying hate) the Ribbon and those of you, like myself, who would like to get the old Menu Bar back, if for no other reason than for expediency in your work, here are two Quick tips. Learning new and sometimes better ways of doing things is great, but at the end of the day we all have to make a profit, don’t we (are you listening Autodesk?).
Here are two ways to get the Menu Bar back:
- Use the Quick Access Toolbar at top of the AutoCAD Civil 3D 2010 screen and select the small downward arrow at the right hand side to Customize the Quick Access Toolbar. Near the bottom of the drop down list select “Show Menu Bar”, and ta-da, the Menu Baris back in action.
Turn on Menu Bar with Quick Access Toolbar
- Or, at the command line simple enter the command “MENUBAR ” which returns the prompt “Enter new value for MENUBAR <0>”, where you would enter the value “1” to show the Menu Bar.
Turn on Menu Bar with Command Line
Using either of the above two methods will turn on the Menu Bar, as shown below:
Menu Bar is Showing
Once you get used to using the Ribbon interface you may be ready to turn off the Menu Bar to free up some valuable screen space.
Loading ...
[...] Professional Land Surveyor – AutoCAD Civil 3D Surveying Quick Tips and Tricks: Menu Bar Go to Source: Eric D. Colburn, Professional Land Surveyor Tagged with: [ AutoCAD, Civil, D Surveying, Eric D. Colburn, menu bar, previous versions, [...]
Please note: the MENUBAR does not contain any of the new 2010 commands/functions.
Thanks for the note. I think that the menu bar will probably only be used as a bridge from old to new until everyone gets used to the ribbon. I also think that for commands that you use infrequently, but remember it’s location in the menu bar, this could come in handy.
What do you think about the ribbon?
I’m learning to like the ribbon, but most will find it a little slow, I do – both in finding what you’re looking for and because it’s contextually switching to what it thinks I’m going to do next quite often just gets in the way of any productivity. The ribbon contextuality (my word) works great for AutoCAD Civil 3D Objects but not so much for everyday AutoCAD drafting. While I think that Autodesk might be on to something here (with improvements), the ribbon seems to me to be at best a wizbang idea of what could be, or at worst just be a re-hashed menu to justify yearly updates.