Monday, February 18, 2008

AutoCAD Tip of the Week

If you use Paperspace in AutoCAD, there is a feature that has been available for the last few releases that is a big time saver! I use this feature all the time to Lock and Unlock Paperspace viewports. It is also a great way to change the scale factor of your viewports very quickly.


In the lower section of your screen menu at the very bottom you will find the Status bar. Typically, you use it to set your Ortho, Polar, and Osnap settings, etc. If you look a little further to the right there is a little Lock icon.


If you pick on this lock while you are in Paperspace viewport, it will Lock and Unlock the viewport view so you can zoom and pan around. This feature is so much faster than having to right-click the viewport border and then select Display Locked on the right-click menu.

Just to the right of the Lock icon is popdown menu that lets you select any scale factor you would like to set in the viewport. If you're a veteran of the earlier versions of AutoCAD, you will remember that you had to know and type in the zoom scale factor such as 1/48xp. That would give you a 1/4"=1'-0" scaled viewport. Is that old technique nuts, or what?!

So now you set your viewport scale and lock and unlock your viewports very quickly. Simple time saving features like this make upgrading your AutoCAD well with the money.

Have a great day! Kevin

1 comment:

intercad said...

Like a software where you can design your own restaurant? coz i've been wanting to put up a small one here at my house, and i can never explain to anyone how i want my restaurant to look like...i hope you can help me... is there a software where you can put trendy design and everything from tables, chairs, wallpaper, floors, and like lights and whatnot?. . . thank you for helping.. uhm...maybe something easier to use? something that a beginner would use..


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