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Contents
Inside Adobe Illustrator
  Vector graphics and Objects
  The Work Area
Working with Files
  Opening, Creating, Placing Files
  Viewing Artwork
The Selection Tools
Drawing With Illustrator
  Paths and Anchor Points
  Direction Lines
  Drawing Straight Lines
  Drawing Curves
  Drawing Basic Shapes
Manipulating Objects
Working with Type
  Setting Type Attributes
  Manipulating Type
  Typing Along A Path
  Using Type Containers
Working with Imported Artwork
  Tracing an Image
Painting in Illustrator
Saving and Exporting Files
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Assignment
    The Illustrator workspace
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The Illustrator work area is divided into four parts, the artboard, the scratch area, the toolbox and several different floating palettes.
The artboard is your primary workspace. This is where your document goes. The artboard is further divided into two sections divided by a dotted rectangle. The imageable area is where your artwork resides. The non-imageable area should be thought of as the margin of the page.

The scratch area does as the name implies. The area surrounding the artboard is a place where you can feel free to "doodle", or try out ideas. Images on the scratchboard do not appear in the final drawing.
Note: Remember to delete images on the scratchboard before making a final copy of your artwork. Otherwise you are making your file larger without adding anything to the image.