LT Unlimited

Viewports Zoom Extents When Activated

This is another post inspired by a frequent discussion-group topic. The scenario is that someone double-clicks inside an unlocked viewport and suddenly the view zooms to extents. Probably not what you had in mind.

Like a lot of unexpected behaviors in AutoCAD LT, the fix is easy once you know where to look. In this case, it's the variable UCSFOLLOW. When it's set to 0, as it is by default, nothing happens to your view when you change the UCS -- i.e. when you go from layout coordinates to model space. But if it gets set to 1, a change in UCS automatically regenerates a plan view, and zooms to the extents of the drawing.

The only thing to remember is that each viewport has its own UCSFOLLOW setting. So if you have more than one viewport acting up, you need to set USCFOLLOW to 0 in each viewport. (That means double-click inside it and change the variable. Changing it in just model space or just a layout isn't enough.)

Locking a viewport also prevents this kind of view changes -- depending on your setup, that may be a viable alternative too.

Named Views and Hyperlinks

I really like getting tips from users, but it's not often I get the same tip from two people! Kevin Braun and Murray Clack wrote in within a few days of each other about the benefits of named views and hyperlinks -- two subjects I haven't posted much about. (I didn't think there were too many of those left!)

Kevin says:

Something I don't see a lot of talk about, but I use almost all day long, are Named Views and Hyperlinks.

We use Named Views to help out the people who use our finished drawings. They click on the Named View and they can see what they need.  This is very cool, because it sets layers, UCS, etc.

We use model space markers with names to direct them to the proper Named View.

As usual, I got tired of typing in the names and all the scrolling down the list of views, and said to myself, "Wouldn't it be cool to just click on the marker?" (a bright light bulb turned on in my head!) I went to Hyperlinks and discovered you can link an object to a Named View! This was very cool.

Now I drop the marker in the drawing, and Hyperlink it to a view. Now all we do is click on the marker and away we go, no more scrolling through a drop down window. Getting around is so much faster now.

Murray's tip:

Below is a step-by-step process that helps you quickly navigate between Modelspace orientations and multiple Layout tabs using Saved Views and Hyperlinks.

1. While in a Layout tab, use the VIEW command to save a view name (usually, I would name the view based on whatever the sheet number would be, like “A101”)
2. Then, draw a closed pline around the perimeter of a Viewport (either on Layer “defpoints” or a unique layer set to “no plot”), and then use the CHSPACE command to send the pline into Modelspace through that Viewport.
3. With your cursor still within Modelspace via inside the Viewport, save a new view name to something reflecting what is going on within the viewport and including the sheet number (eg. “Plan 1 – A101”), and then bring your cursor back into the Layout environment (ie. PSPACE command)
4. Enter the command HYPERLINK
5. When prompted to “Select Objects”, select the Viewport boundary that you just saved a view in.
6. When the “Edit Hyperlink” dialog box appears, click on the “View of this Drawing” button
7.  Expand the Model tree by clicking on the “+” symbol, select the view name you just created, and then click the OK button

Now, hold down your Ctrl key, and click once on the Viewport boundary with your left mouse button.  AutoCAD will then switch to Modelspace and zoom into the area of the saved Modelspace view that you created earlier – and you will also see the closed pline that you sent through the Viewport.

To get back to the Layout tab, repeat steps 4 through 7, but this time, select the closed pline and select the saved view for the Layout.

(I just tried Murray's tip, and it's not as complicated as it sounds. Really.)

Two slightly different approaches, but both using the same tools to speed up navigation in drawings.

What do you think? Anybody else out there using named views and hyperlinks?

Trapped in Modelspace

It's happened to all of us: You zoom into a little space on your layout to check something, double-click in the drawing (either accidentally or on purpose), and end up in modelspace. If you're there on purpose, you can make your edits and be done, but if you've double-clicked by accident, you might not realize what's happened until you try to zoom out and realize you can't see your title block.

Oops.

So, how to get back to paper space? You can't zoom out to see the viewport border, selecting the layout tab name won't do it, and you may or may not have paper and model toggles in your status bar (depending on version and status bar settings).

One way is to type PS (alias for PSPACE), but there's another nifty way too.

Instead of heading for the command line, go to the status bar and lock your viewport. Then you can zoom out, unlock the viewport, and reset the scale. (Locking the viewport again when you're done doesn't hurt, to prevent this sort of thing from happening again.)

Just another proof that there's always more than one way to do anything in AutoCAD LT.

Rotate a view along with its viewport

Prior to AutoCAD LT 2010, you couldn't rotate paperspace viewports. (If you tried, it just sort of moved around the screen, maintaining its original orientation.) If you wanted to show a viewport at a different orientation, you had to go through a multi-step process involving the UCS and PLAN commands...big hassle.

Now, though, you can change a view's orientation simply by rotating its viewport.

Here's the original view:

 

And after using the rotate command on the viewport:

 

The view automatically updates to match the new orientation -- no need to mess around with the UCS or anything.

This is the default behavior, but if you don't like it, we've given you the option to turn it off. Setting the system variable VPROTATEASSOC to 0 means that only the viewport boundary rotates, not the view inside it.

Create a Viewport with Holes

Now that AutoCAD LT has the ability to create non-rectangular viewports, I thought I'd share a way to create viewports with "holes", or empty spaces.
 
Let's say you want a triangular viewport with a circular hole in the middle.

The first step is to turn the objects into regions with the Region command, available on the Draw panel of the Home tab. Just start the command, and select the two objects. When you're finished, they don't look any different, but when you select them you'll see that the grips have changed, and if you try to grip-edit the shapes they'll move instead of stretch.

To get the hole in the middle, you'll use the Subtract command, to subtract the circular region from the triangular. This command is a little sneaky, since it's only available at the command line. (Of course, you could always put it on a button if you want.) You'll first pick the object to subtract from (the triangle), and then the object to be subtracted (the circle). Again, at first glance, nothing seems to have changed, but when you hover over the region boundary you'll see that it's now one object instead of two.

Now you're ready to turn the region into a viewport. To do this you'll use the "Create from Object" function from the Viewports panel of the View tab. This enables you to convert an existing object -- a closed polyline, an ellipse, a spline, a region (hint, hint), or a circle -- into a viewport. Just start the command, select the region, and there it is.

The region has become a viewport. You can pan, zoom, and set the scale just like you would with any other viewport. The only catch is that you can't edit the boundaries like you would with a polygonal viewport. To change it, you pretty much have to erase it and start over. (Sorry.) It can still be pretty handy, though!

Copy/Paste a Viewport

Today's post highlights one of those feature improvements that isn't big enough to get a lot of mention in the product documentation, but can still have an impact on your day-to-day productivity.

Prior to LT 2009, when you used Ctrl+C to copy a viewport and Ctrl+V to paste it, the new viewport was turned "off", i.e. it didn't display the objects inside it. You had to use the Properties palette (Misc --> On --> Yes) or the right-click menu (Display viewport objects --> Yes) to turn it back on.

Now, though, when you paste a viewport, it's turned on by default. (Hooray!)

I hope that saves somebody a few seconds in their day -- even a few seconds over hundreds of copy-pastes can add up to a lot of time!

Change Viewport Scale

A question came up on the discussion groups today, and I thought it would make a pretty good blog post.

Somebody wanted to know what happened in 2009 to the pull-down that you could use to change the scale of a viewport. It's still on the Viewports toolbar, if you want to turn that on, but at first glance it doesn't appear to be in the new Ribbon-based environment. (Another reason why second glances can sometimes be very helpful.)

It turns out that the viewport scale control is another context-sensitive bit of the user interface, like the mtext and Block Editor Ribbon tabs. When you have a viewport selected, or when you double-click inside it, a control appears on the right-hand side of the status bar.

In the image above, the viewport scale is 1" = 1'-0". If you look for this without having a viewport active, it won't be there, so pay attention!

Also, if you have Quick Properties turned on, one of the default listings for a viewport is its scale -- another quick and easy place to make the change.

Change Size of Quick View Previews

If the size of the Quick View Drawing or Layout previews are too big or too small to efficiently display the drawings you have open, it's really easy to change the size.

All you have to do is hover your cursor over one of the preview images, hold down Ctrl, and roll the mouse wheel up or down.

So the preview images go quickly from the default size...

To smaller previews...

Or larger.

Rotate View

I see a lot of questions out there (in fact, I got one by e-mail just last week) on how to rotate a view now that DVIEW is no longer available. Fortunately, it's still easy to do.

The two commands you'll need are UCS and PLAN. UCS stands for User Coordinate System, and is both a noun (i.e. "the current UCS") and a command name (i.e. "use the UCS command).

The most common scenario I see for this is that "north", which is typically "up" in model space, needs to point in a different direction on a sheet, usually to accommodate the shape of a building or site. In this case, "north" would correspond to the direction of the Y-axis in a 2D coordinate system.

So in order to rotate our view, we need to rotate the X and Y axes to a new direction. The easiest way to do this to rotate the UCS about the Z-axis. The Z-axis is perpendicular to both the X and Y axes, so in a 2D system like LT, that means it points straight out of the screen. (It's the same axis uses by the Rotate command, in case the previous sentence didn't help.)

Conveniently enough, there's a button on the UCS panel of the View tab of the Ribbon that will do exactly that. So if you want "north" to point right instead of up, click the "Z" button (or type UCS-->Z) and enter 90 (remember that positive rotations are counterclockwise). Now we have a rotated coordinate system.

Notice that the little square at the intersection of the axes has disappeared. That's becuase the current UCS no longer corresponds to the World UCS. But you'll also notice that your view hasn't changed. We've only changed the UCS, not the view.

That's where the PLAN command comes in. PLAN aligns the current view to a coordinate system, either the current one, the world one, or a previously-saved named one. It's available from the command line or through the Menu Browser, Tools menu, but not from the Ribbon.

Using it is simple. Just start the command and press enter to align the view to the current UCS. Notice that although the axes are back in their "normal" orientation, the square that indicates World UCS is still missing. This is a helpful visual cue to show you that you're in a different UCS.

If you've run this sequence in a viewport, I highly recommend locking it after you've finished panning and scaling your view. This just helps avoid any unexpected changes.

Also, if you need to continue working in the drawing, you'll probably want to set your UCS back to World (there's a big button on the Ribbon to do this) to put the axes back to normal.

Pan a Specified Distance

You can PAN specific distances with the View-->Pan-->Point command. (Or with "-P (note the dash) at the command line.) This command asks you to pick two points, the first of which must be selected with the mouse. Entering the second point at the command line (either in the "#,#" format or with polar or ortho tracking) moves the drawing by that amount. Selecting a second point with the mouse moves the view from the location of the first point to the location of the second point.