Have you ever counted how many ways there are to access commands in AutoCAD LT? I count six: the ribbon, grips, the command line, tool palettes, menus, and toolbars. (Did I miss any?) Of all those methods, the command line has been around the longest, so it’s probably the most deserving of an update. This new & improved version now floats transparently in your drawing window, freeing up a few extra pixels of real estate. But just because you only see one line now, that doesn’t mean that’s all you get. As soon as you start entering commands, a scrolling history appears above the command line. And this is where it really gets interesting. You won’t believe the number of new things there are to talk about just in this screenshot. At the very left are the drag bar and the close button. Reposition the bar anywhere on your screen, or even dock it back at the bottom where it used to be. Next up is the wrench icon for Settings, where you can control the AutoComplete display, the Lines of Prompt History (more on that in a second), the Transparency, or go to the Options dialog. The next icon—the small square actually in the command prompt—brings up your most recent commands. Let’s go back to the command-in-progress command line: Notice that there’s now an icon and the command name itself displayed in the command line, to help you keep track of what you’re doing. Also, the capital letters that indicate command options are now blue, and what’s more, they’re clickable, so you can activate them either by typing or with the mouse. (Does that count as a 7th way of accessing commands?) Back to the prompt history. By default, you get 3 lines at a time, and they fade away after a few seconds of inactivity, helping to keep your screen clear. If you want to see more, you can press F2 or click the arrow at the far right of the command line. And if you want the full text window as in previous releases, that’s now Ctrl+F2. I hope you enjoy this revamped command line—happy typing!

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