AutoCAD 2005 for Dummies

  Some of the zoom options take some getting used to. I recommend that you use realtime zoom and pan for most of your zooming and panning. Supplement it with Zoom Window to move quickly into a precise area, Zoom Previous to back up in zoom/pan time, and Zoom All or Zoom Extents to view your whole drawing.

A View by Any Other Name…

If you find yourself repeatedly zooming and panning to the same area, you probably can get there faster with a named view. A named view is a name that you assign to a particular region of your drawing. After you create a named view, you can return to that region quickly by restoring the view. You use the View command, which displays the View dialog box, to create and restore named views. Follow these steps to create a named view: 

1. Zoom and pan until you find the view that you want to assign a name to. 

2. Choose View>Named Views.

The View dialog box appears. 

3. Click the New button.

The New View dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 7-2.

Figure 7-2: Create a new view for you. 

4. Type a name in the View Name text box. 

5. (Optional) Type a new category in the View Category box, or select an existing one from the drop-down list.

  View Category is a new view property in AutoCAD 2005. You use it to organize views and certain display characteristics of views in sheet sets, as described in Chapter 14. Until you use the sheet sets feature, you can leave this box blank. 

6. Select the Current Display radio button, if it’s not selected already.

  If you want to name a region other than the currently displayed view, select the Define Window radio button instead, click the Define View Window button to the right of it, and pick two corners of the region’s rectangle (as though you were zooming windows).

7. Confirm or change the choices in the Settings area.

  The Store Current Layer Settings with View option is new in AutoCAD 2005. If you leave this setting turned on, then when you later restore the view, AutoCAD also will restore the layer visibility settings (on/off and freeze/thaw) that were in effect when you created the view. (Chapter 4 describes the layer visibility settings.) The two UCS-related settings are primarily for 3D drawings (see Chapter 8). If you’re creating 2D drawings, you can ignore the UCS settings. 

8. Click OK.

The New View dialog box disappears, and you see your new named view in the list in the View dialog box.

9. Click OK.

The View dialog box disappears.

To restore a named view, choose View>Named Views or enter View at the command line to display the View dialog box. Click the name of the view that you want to restore, click the Set Current button, and then click OK to close the dialog box.

  With the new Update Layers and Edit Boundaries buttons in the main View dialog box, you can change the layer visibility settings that AutoCAD associates with an existing view and revise the view’s boundary.

  You also can plot the area defined by a named view. See Chapter 12 for instructions on plotting views.

Looking Around in Layout Land

All the zoom, pan, and view operations I describe in this chapter apply to paper space layouts as well as to model space. (Chapter 3 describes the difference between model space and paper space and how to navigate between the two.) One little complication exists, though: In a paper space layout — that is, any drawing area tab except for the Model tab — it’s possible for the cursor to be either in paper space or in model space inside a viewport. Zooming and panning have a different effect depending on which space your cursor is in at the moment. Experiment with the different effects by following these steps: 

1. Open a drawing that contains at least one paper space layout with a title block and one or more viewports.

If you don’t have any such drawings handy, try using the AutoCAD sample drawing Program Files AutoCAD 2005SampleWilhome.dwg.

2. Click one of the layout tabs — that is, any tab other than the Model tab.

AutoCAD displays the paper space layout for that tab, including any title block and viewports. 

3. Click the PAPER/MODEL button on the status bar until it says PAPER.

Alternatively, you can double-click in the gray part of the drawing area outside of the layout.

The cursor is now in paper space, so zooming and panning changes the display of all the objects in the layout, including the title block. 

4. Choose View>Zoom>All.

AutoCAD displays the entire layout, as shown in Figure 7-3.

Figure 7-3: The full layout. 

5. Zoom and pan by using any of the techniques described in this chapter.

Zooming and panning change the appearance of the title block, as shown in Figure 7-4. The effect is similar to moving a plotted sheet in and out and all around in front of your face.

Figure 7-4: Zooming in paper space.

6. Choose View>Zoom>All.

AutoCAD displays the entire layout again.

7. Click the PAPER/MODEL button on the status bar until it says MODEL.

Alternatively, you can double-click with the cursor over a viewport. The cursor is now in model space, inside the viewport, so zooming and panning change only the display of the objects that are visible in the viewport. The display of the title block doesn’t change.

8. Zoom and pan by using any of the techniques described in this chapter.

Zooming and panning don’t change the appearance of the title block, as shown in Figure 7-5. The result looks as if you’re moving a picture of the model space geometry in and out and all around behind a frame.

Figure 7-5: Zooming in a model space viewport.

  In real drawings, you usually shouldn’t zoom and pan inside viewports after they’ve been set up (see Chapter 3). Doing so changes the scale of the viewport, which messes up plotting. I’m asking you to do it here to illustrate the difference between zooming in paper space and zooming in a model space viewport.