This is a portion of our DraftSight User Manual, which should be accessible via the EagleRock Help icon on your machine's Desktop.  If you do not have a Help icon, contact EagleRock customer support to have this feature added.


DraftSight User Interface

The DraftSight user interface is made up of five main components, the menu bar, toolbars, drawing window, command window, and status bar:



EagleRock’s DraftSight User Guide will only cover the portions of these components that are normally used while drawing countertops.


Menu bar

The File and Edit menus contain items that we are familiar with, such as Open/Save, and Copy/Paste respectively.


The View menu consists of items that pertain to the drawing window. Normally, you will access these items through other shortcuts. For example, you can Zoom using the mouse wheel. Also, double clicking the mouse wheel will execute the zoomfit command, which will zoom so that all entities will fit in the window.


You will not need to use the items in the Insert menu.


You will be using the Format menu to access the Layer… option when importing cutouts.


You may use the tools in the Dimension menu to confirm the measurements of your drawings.


The Draw menu is in many ways a copy of the Draw toolbar. However, the Draw menu contains options for circles, arcs and ellipses that are not found in the Draw toolbar. For example, Draw ⇢ Circle has 6 options for drawing circles, whereas the Circle button on the Draw toolbar only has one option.


The Modify menu is a copy of the Modify toolbar. While you can use the Modify menu, the toolbar is easier for most.


The Tools menu contains many miscellaneous tools. You will likely only use the Tools ⇢ Options item, as well as the Inquiry ⇢ Get Area & Get Distance items. Options is where you will change DraftSight’s settings. Get Area and Get Distance are tools for measuring. They will give you measurements without adding entities to your drawing, as Dimensions would.


The Window menu give you access to other files that may be open. Draftsight is capable of opening multiple files at once. In the Window menu, you can arrange and select windows.


The Help menu gives you access to DraftSight’s help dialog.  


Toolbars

The toolbars provide quick access to the tools and commands that you will be using. By hovering over a tool, a tooltip with the tool’s name will appear beside the mouse pointer. There are three toolbars that you will be using: Draw, Modify and Standard.


The Draw toolbar contains all of the drawing tools that you will normally use. When selecting a tool, the entity’s command is executed in the command window, with the default options selected. You can select specific options for circles, arcs and ellipses from the Draw menu.


The Modify toolbar contains the tools that modify entities, such as delete, copy, move and rotate.


The Standard toolbar contains the tools necessary for working with files. Here you can open and save drawings, copy and paste, and with the arrow buttons, you can undo and redo commands.


If there is not enough room to display all of the toolbar’s icons, you will find an more button  at the bottom of the toolbar, which, when clicked will display the missing buttons.


Customizing Toolbars

In DraftSight the toolbars are completely customizable. You can change which toolbars are displayed and the location in which they are displayed. Because of this, you may find that your toolbars are different than the ones in the image above, or in the video tutorials.

To add or remove toolbars, right click on any toolbar ⇢ MAIN, then select the toolbar you wish to add or remove.



To move a toolbar to a new location, click and hold on the toolbar’s handle, the two vertical lines of dots on the left side of the tool bar:



Then drag and drop the tool bar to the desired location. If the handle does not appear, right click on any toolbar ⇢ Lock Location and then deselect both Floating Toolbars and Docking Toolbars. The handle should now appear. 


To change the order in which buttons appear on the toolbars, right click on any toolbar ⇢ Interface ⇢ Toolbars ⇢ Select the toolbar you wish to modify and expand it by double clicking. Now you can drag the button to the desired location on the toolbar.




Status Bar

At the bottom of the screen is the status bar. The status bar contains drawing aids and guides, as well as the coordinate display.



To toggle a drawing aid on and off, just click its button. To change the setting of a drawing aid, just right click on its button and select Settings. 


The coordinate display shows the location of the mouse pointer. By default, the coordinates shown are relative to the drawing’s origin. You can display relative coordinates by starting a line, then right clicking on the coordinate display and selecting Relative. This will show relative polar coordinates when you are drawing an entity.


Drawing Area

The Drawing Area is the black area in the middle of the DraftSight window. This is the area in which you will draw.



Inside of the Drawing Area you will see the origin. The origin is the starting point for the coordinate system. Unless you use relative coordinates, all of your coordinates will be interpreted in relation to the origin.


If you right click on the drawing area, a menu will appear:



Clicking Enter is the same as typing the enter key into the command window. Cancel will exit out of the current command. You can also enable specific ESnaps from this menu.