Viewing Drawings (Zooming and Panning)

One of the chief drawbacks of working on CADD drawings is the small monitor screen through which the entire drawing must be viewed. Since the screen will never be large enough to see the drawing accurately and in detail, you will spend a considerable amount of your CADD drawing time, ZOOMing in and out of the drawing. You may also do some PANning (which is looking from one side of the drawing to another without changing the magnification of the image).
 
 

Zooming

To zoom into one room on the floor plan, do the following:

1. Select the "Zoom" icon from the toolbar.

[Note that you may also type the alias for zoom: Z <RET>]

2. Pick the lower left corner of an imaginary window (rectangle) which would enclose the room you want to look at.

3. Pick the upper right corner of an imaginary window (rectangle) which would enclose the room you want to look at. You will see the rectangle appearing on the screen, in rubberband fashion.

4. Once this is done, the area enclosed with in the ZOOMing window just created will fill the entire monitor screen.
 
 

 It is important to understand that by ZOOMing, you do not change the actual size or scale of the area of drawing selected to look at, but you change only how apparently close you are to the objects.

To zoom back to the way the monitor screen looked just previous to the ZOOMing in, type Z<RET>P<RET> (for "Zoom" "Previous")

To see the entire drawing filling the monitor screen, from furthest entity to furthest entity in both directions, type Z<RET>E<RET>. (This means ZOOM, EXTENTS).

To see what the drawing looks like compared with the overall "Limits" of the drawing, type Z<RET>A<RET>. (This means ZOOM, ALL)

"Transparent" Zooms

You can zoom in the middle of drawing and editing commands "transparently" to allow working close up to an object. To do this, either precede the typed letter Z at the keyboard with an apostrophe like this: >Z <RET>, or pick the ZOOM command from the View Pull-down menu or from the Toolbar.
 
 
 
 

PANNING

Moving your center of view across the screen without changing the apparent size of the objects, or PANning, as it is called, is similar to Zooming in technique.

2. Select the "Pan" icon from the toolbar.

[Note that you may also type the alias for pan: P <RET>]

3. At the Command: prompt statement, "Displacement," pick a point on the screen with the crosshairs which you would like to slide over in some direction. This can be thought of as the handle by which you are going to slide the drawing around under the monitor screen.

4. At the command prompt statement, "Second point," pick a second point to where you want to slide the first point (or the "handle").

 Remember that you are not actually moving anything on the drawing, but only your particular area of viewing of the drawing.

"Transparent" Pans

You can pan in the middle of drawing and editing commands "transparently" to allow working close up to an object. To do this, either precede the typed letter P at the keyboard with an apostrophe, like this: >P <RET>, or pick the Pan Command from the View pull-down menu.
 
 

Creating Frequently Used Saved "Views"

You will discover that sometimes when you Zoom or Pan you have to wait while AutoCAD recalculates all locations of all thawed vectors of lines, arcs and circles. This regeneration is a waste of time which can be avoided by making use of the VIEW making techniques in AutoCAD. As the drawing develops, it will be apparent which zooms and pans are needed frequently for close-up work. Whenever a zoom is made, you should record a view of the screen by making the zoomed image into a "View" which can be recalled at will in the future. To make a view of any screen image, do the following:

1. Pick from the View heading in the Pull-down menus, the word "Named views..."

2. This will bring up a so-called "Dialogue box" which will then prompt you to name the view you want to save, and save it.

3. Pick the button labeled "New". Type in a simple view name in the dialogue box. At this point you could assign a view a number or a short description of the area viewed (one word only with no spaces). Then pick the "SAVE VIEW" box, and then pick the "OK" box.

To bring back a view you have saved within the drawing, do the following:

1. Pick from the View heading in the Pull-down menus, the word "Set view."

2. Move cursor to the right onto the arrow, and Pick the word "Named View..." from the Set view sub-menu.

3. Pick the name of the view you want to bring back from the list of saved views in the Dialogue Box so it is highlighted.

4. Pick the box "Restore."

5. Pick the box "OK."

Restoring VIEWS to the screen is the same as zooming in or panning. That is, the resulting image can be worked on and within, but using this feature saves much time because the windows are already selected and little or no regeneration of the images will need to occur.