Understanding Workspace

A workspace is an arrangement of the interface elements, such as panels, bars, and windows in the main illustrator window. While working with Illustrator, you close, open, and move various panels as required. There are various built-in workspaces, such as Essentials, Automation, and Painting.

You can select these workspaces using the Workspaces switcher drop-down list. Each preset is optimized to perform certain tasks and designed for space and workflow efficiency. By default, Essentials appears as the selected workspace when you launch Illustrator CS6 for the first time.

The Essentials workspace contains the Application bar, the Control panel, the Tools panel, and few important panels, such as Layers, Color, and Symbols when you select a different workspace, the most frequently used panels and menus of the selected workspaces appear in the main Illustrator window. For instance, if you select Typography as the current Workspace, Illustrator displays various panels including Character, Paragraph, Character Styles, Paragraph Styles and Glyphs. These panels help you to work with text. 

You can also create custom Workspaces by saving a custom arrangement of panels and windows. You can also remove Workspace if not required.

There are eight built-in workspaces in Illustrator CS6 as discussed below

1.  Automation: Displays the panels required to automate in Illustrator. The panels include Actions, Links and Variables.
2.  Essentials: Displays the basic menu options and essential panels. This is the default workspace and appears when you launch the Illustrator application for the first time. The Essentials Workspaces is used to work with basic features of Illustrator.
3.   Layout: Lets you work with the illustrator layout. It is introduced in Illustrator CS6. The panels displayed in the workspace are art-boards, layers , align , pathfinder, and transform.
4.    Painting: Displays the panels frequently used while painting in illustrator. The panels include color, Swatches, Color Guide, and Gradient.
5.    Printing and Proofing: Displays the panels used to print and color proof in illustrator. The panels include Separations preview and Flattener preview.
6.    Tracing: Displays panels used frequently while tracing image in illustrator including Image Trace and Attribute.
7.   Typography: Displays the panels that are frequently used while working with type. The panels include Character, Paragraph, Paragraph Styles, Character Styles, and Glyphs.
8.    Web: Displays the panels frequently used while working with artwork for the Web. The panels include Swatches, Color, Color Guide, Symbols, and Appearance.