Cursor text boxes not displaying...Please help!

I'm starting a new drawing in Civil 3D 2012 and when I go to draw a line I can't see the small text boxes that show up beside the cursor that allow you to input numbers. I like to type my lengths and angles into these boxes to draw my lines as it makes it 100% accurate however the aren't showing up. Drawing lines is essentially useless because I now have to eyeball it. Is there a keyboard shortcut to get these boxes to display again? Please help.

Are you talking about Dynamic Input?

Even if the boxes aren't available you can still use direct distance entry at the keyboard so there is no reason what-so-ever to "eyeball" it. That's just poor technique if you do.

I am aware that I can enter the distance in the command bar at the bottom, However I cannot enter the angle at which I want to draw. This is why I said drawing lines is essentially useless because without the option to enter my angle my only other option is to eyeball. If I was o.k with eyeballing it I wouldn't be here trying to find the answer to this question. Is there a command to get these text boxes to appear again?

Use Dynamic Input. You can toggle it on via a button at the bottom left hand corner of your screen. Status Bar - look for DYN.

F12 DYNMODE Toggles dynamic input mode on and off.

- it is possible to enter BOTH angle AND distance at the command line.

You might also want to learn about Polar Tracking too.

Distance AND angle entered at the command line would look like this example:

@15

That's a distance of 15 units at an angle or 45 degrees.

unnecessary comments removed

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