by John Flanagan
What are Named Views?
Named views are areas of a drawing that are stored under specific names (like callouts in Revit). You can use named views to define specific areas in a large architectural plan, as shown. Another example would be to have a defined view of each quadrant of a large site. Engineers could use named views to define small parts in a large mechanical assembly.
The illustration above defines two named views on a large Architectural floor plan. The process to create and list these views is described next.
Creating Named Views in AutoCAD
Named views can be created quickly using the New View command located on the View tab of the Ribbon.
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.
When you select the New View command the New View/Shot properties box opens. In this dialogue box you enter the name of the view. Next in the Boundary area click on the Define Window.
You are now prompted to create a window around a specific area of the drawing – for example we have created an area around the toilets of the floor plan above and named it Toilets. Once you create the window to define the named view and click OK in the dialogue box, the view is saved with the name you specified and listed in the drop-down list under Unsaved View in the Named Views panel. This process was repeated for the elevators and stairs.
We can now zoom into those named views by selecting the named view from the drop-down list. This gives us much tighter navigation control of our views compared to using the zoom command.
The named views also become available in the layouts and they can easily be inserted as layout viewports. Inserting named views in layouts will be the topic of my next blog.