Model with a View…

Sounds like comment you would find in real estate. That’s because people find that to be important or at the least a nice feature to have. Well, what if I said I was talking about your AutoCAD drawing area? The saying would still apply! CAD users love having the maximum amount of area to work. Unfortunately, difficulties happen with widely spread out projects or when you need to see close ups of different areas, or views in the drawing. Well, while AutoCAD have always had the capability to split the screen for quite some time now using Viewports, it didn’t offer much control in Model space. For example; if you were to divide the screen up, all of the Viewports are equal size. I remember in the older versions of AutoCAD (…back when they had an R in the name. lol) you could make model viewports inside model viewports (up to 32 of them if I recall correctly?) and then you could join some of them together to create different size and configuration on your screen. But unfortunately that was no longer the case. Then you could only do preset configurations viewports with a maximum of 4 viewports. And you were still not able to resize or join them together like before… UNTIL NOW!

AutoCAD 2015 has not only given back some of the control of Model Space Viewport, but has made it even easier to Create, Join and Re-size them. Here is how it works…
First of all you want to make a typical viewport configuration using the standard method using the VPORTS command (There are several ways to get there… Naturally, it’s AutoCAD…Duh.) In case you were not aware of the latest way, you can use the Viewport controls [+] on the upper left corner of the drawing screen. Note: the color of the display of the Viewports controls often conflicts with the screen background color making it hard to see, or even know it is there. You can change this in your [Color…] settings on the Display tab in the options dialog box.

In the Viewport Configuration List you can either select one of the preset view configurations from the list or you can choose Configure… at the bottom of the menu to go to the Viewports dialog where you can choose from several options such as 2D or 3D, Viewing direction or Visual Style to apply to each separate viewport being created.

Once you have create your Model space Viewports you can now modify those existing viewport edges to re-size, create new viewports or join the existing ones together.

Here is how it works:

RE-SIZING: To re-size a viewport in Model space simply hold your cursor over the inner edges of one of the existing viewports until you see the double arrow (<->) then click with your left mouse button and drag it to the new desired location. If you pass your cursor over the intersection it will display the 4-way arrow you can re-size vertically and horizontally at the same time.

NEW: Creating New Viewports from existing viewports in the same manner as re-sizing them; but hold down the Ctrl key while executing the function. Also there is a Super Duper, Teeny Tiny, Itty Bitty, plus sign in the top and bottom of the viewport edge itself that would allow you to create the new viewport without having to hold down the control key.

Each Viewport edge will then make another viewport from that edge, and so on.

JOIN: The existing viewports can be joined together just by doing the re-size into the edge of another existing viewport. Just before the two viewports merge it will display a highlight around the 2 viewports. Note: You cannot join one viewport with other multiple viewports of different size, meaning it must be able to make a perfect rectangle. It will display a DO NOT symbol (A.K.A Ghostbuster symbol) on the screen alerting you that you will not be able to join them in that matter. To get around this join the 2 that match in size first the join the other on into that one.

In the first example image I am dragging the horizontal edge of viewport that is between the 2 smaller viewport to the top horizontal edge. When I get close I will see it highlight all the way around both viewport to indicate they will be joined into one and what the new boundary edges of the viewport.

In the second example image I am trying to drag the right-side vertical edge over to the left side vertical edges of the 2 smaller viewports. Notice I get the DO NOT symbol because AutoCAD can’t complete this merge as I am doing it.

(TIP: I would need to join the smaller ones together first, then join the bigger one to the side into that.)

This concludes how the new Model space viewport control works in AutoCAD 2015… Enjoy the View!

Tags: AutoCAD 2015, AutoCAD LT, Modelspace, New Features, User Interface, Viewports

This entry was posted on Friday, August 15th, 2014 at 8:23 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.