[Karlf]

I'm new to autocad. I have watched tutorials where when as they are drawing a line, little boxes pop up that show the length and angle of the line.

Also, I have seen where they have a little box in the drawing area that shows the orientation of things..

How do I turn these on.

I'm using autocad 2010


***EDIT*** I got them turned on, but please still tell me how. I'm not sure how I did it.

Also, when drawing, say a series of boxes. Is there any way I can lock the z plane, so the bottom of all of the boxes are at the same level?

[Chalkbot]

The first feature you described is called "Dynamic Input". You can toggle it on in several ways, the easiest of which is to click the little button below the command line labled "DYN".

As for you second question, that is the default behavior of Autocad. If you are getting boxes with different Z values, you must have your object snaps turned on and are inadvertantly snaping to the Z value of other objects in your drawing. Toggle object snaps on and off with the "OSNAP" button, which is found near the previously described "DYN" button. Right click on it to define which object snaps you want to use. Lookup object snaps in the help file if you don't know what I'm talking about.

Also, having "DYN" on while drawing those boxes will "snap" your drawing plane to existing 3D faces in the drawing as well. Notice how the faces of any boxes you already have in the file will highlight under your cursor when you go to place a new box. This means Autocad will not use a Z value of zero and will instead place the origin of your new box on the highlighted face of the existing box with the first corner being directly under your pointer.

Hope that helps.

[Al_The_Man]

I use an older version of Acad so I am not sure if this works in 2010, but I set the COORDS to 2, it usually comes with 1 as default, this show the length and angle in the menu bar.
Al.