By Dennis Collin
When working on large drawings there is often a requirement to be able to quickly view or present specific small areas within a drawing. Examples include a toilet or stairwell in an Architectural Plan, a component detail within a large mechanical assembly, or a culvert or bridge detail on a civil engineering plan.
In addition, if working on a 3D drawing, being able to see a model in plan, isometric or section quickly named views are also essential. AutoCAD Camera objects can be used for viewing 3D views and can also be named for later reference.
This functionality can be most efficiently realised with the named views function within AutoCAD. Named views are areas of a drawing that are stored under specific names. Although present in AutoCAD since the days of MS DOS, last century! Many AutoCAD users are unaware of this function and still setup sheet views manually which is more time consuming.
Named views can be created quickly using the New View command located on the View tab of the Ribbon. Alternatively, users can type in ‘VIEW’ from the command prompt.
When the New View command is selected, the New View/Shot properties box opens. In this dialogue box the name of the view can be entered. to define the view extents, click on the Define Window button.
Once a named view is created, it is automatically listed in the Named Views panel. Click the Unsaved View drop-down to see the list of named views.
Once defined this view can then be selected at any time, providing a much more efficient way of recalling the view later within model space or within a paper space viewport. I would say if working on large or complex drawings the usage of named saved views is a must!
It is worth noting that in addition to storing the view extents area, named views can also remember the display properties of layers, annotation scale and the active UCS. Named views are a key component within AutoCAD's Sheet set manager as well.
I will talk about the placement of views onto sheets and AutoCAD's Sheet Set Manager in a future post.