You can have up to 256 layouts, including the Model tab for model space. If the tabs are not displayed, right-click the current layout button on the status bar and choose Display Layout and Model Tabs. Right-click an existing layout tab and choose from the following options on the shortcut menu:

When you click a new (unused) layout tab, or choose it from the layout button (or Additional Layouts menu) on the status bar, by default you see one floating viewport. However, you can create and save page setups that store many of the settings that were explained previously in the discussion of the Layout Wizard. The value in saving page setups is that the settings are attached to the layout. If you have more than one layout, each with its own page setup, then you can quickly switch the page settings as you move from layout to layout. After you have page setups, you can manage them in the Page Setup Manager, as shown in Figure 17.4.

Figure 17.4. The Page Setup Manager helps you to control your page setups.

Note

When you check the Display When Creating a New Layout check box, the Page Setup Manager automatically appears each time you display a layout for the first time. To make it display each time if it does not appear, right-click the current paper space layout tab (you need a tab to do this) and choose Page Setup Manager; then check the check box. You can also specify whether you want the Page Setup Manager to appear when you click a new layout by choosing Application Button

To create a new page setup, click New. In the New Page Setup dialog box, enter a name for the page setup. Choose an existing page setup to start from so that you don't have to change all the settings, and click OK. The Page Setup dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 17.5.

Figure 17.5. The Page Setup dialog box.

Here's how to use the Page Setup dialog box:

When you've completed your settings in the dialog box, click OK to return to the Page Setup Manager. You can see the new page setup in the list. To make the page setup active, click Set Current. Then click Close to return to your drawing.

If necessary, create the layers that you need. If you want to insert a titleblock, create a separate layer for it. The actual viewports should also be on their own layer, because it's common to freeze that layer or set it to non-plottable, so that the borders don't show. Even if you want to plot the viewports, making them a different color from your model helps you to easily distinguish them.

Insert the titleblock. You can have a file that contains just the titleblock. You can also use a block or external reference. Putting the titleblock on your layout is common because it defines the edges of your paper and is not a real-life object. These qualities make it appropriate for paper space.

Remember that you need a floating viewport to see your model on a paper space layout. The default is one floating viewport. Floating viewports have properties that are important to understand when you're creating layouts in paper space:

Whatever you draw in paper space does not affect your models; it exists only in paper space and disappears when you click the Model tab or button.

Because viewports are created on the current layer, you need to make the desired layer current. If the default viewport appears and you don't want it, select and delete it. Then to create floating viewports, choose View tab

Figure 17.6. Use the Viewports dialog box to choose one of the standard configurations of floating viewports.

You can also create a polygonal viewport.

Polygonal viewports are now in AutoCAD LT. Follow these steps:

As soon as you create a viewport, you see your drawing in the new viewport.

After creating viewports, the next step is to set the view in each viewport. To do this, you need to return to model space, while still on the layout, and make a viewport active. The active viewport shows a dark border. You can do this in two ways:

To help you work more easily in a viewport, you can maximize the viewport temporarily without leaving the layout. Just double-click the selected viewport's border. Another way to maximize a viewport is to right-click with the viewport border selected and choose Maximize Viewport. The viewport takes up the entire screen, and you see a red border around the edge. You can draw, edit, zoom, or pan in the view as you normally would in model space; however, zooming and panning have no effect on the viewport's view or scale. When you've finished making the desired changes, right-click and choose Minimize Viewport. The commands that maximize and minimize a viewport are VPMAX and VPMIN. While you're in a layout, you can use the following buttons on the status bar:

You'll probably want to set the zoom for each viewport to exact scale. Each viewport can have its own scale, and you can set the zoom in three ways:

After you scale each viewport, you need to go back and pan until you see what you want in the viewport. If necessary, you can also change the size of the viewport itself.

If you remain in model space with a viewport active, and then zoom in or out, you change the displayed scale of the model. After you set the scale, you should lock it to avoid this problem. To lock a viewport, select the viewport's border (while in paper space) and display the Properties palette. Choose Display Locked and then choose Yes from the drop-down list. (You can also select the viewport, right-click, and choose Display Locked

To adjust the viewports themselves, return to paper space by clicking MODEL on the status bar or by double-clicking anywhere outside a viewport (but in the drawing area). You cannot access your models anymore, but you can now move and resize the viewports if necessary. You can use grips to stretch and move them, or use the STRETCH and MOVE commands.

The VPCLIP command enables you to redefine the boundary of an existing viewport. You can delete the boundary of a clipped viewport and change it to a rectangular viewport or create a polygonal boundary just as you do when creating a polygonal viewport.

You can also turn viewports on and off. When a viewport is off, it doesn't display your model. Do this when the regeneration process becomes slow as a result of a large number of viewports or a complex drawing. To turn off a viewport, select it (in paper space); then right-click and choose Display Viewport Objects

The PSLTSCALE system variable controls linetype scaling in paper space viewports. By default, it is set to 1 so that the paper space scale controls the scale of any noncontinuous linetypes. This lets you have viewports of differing scales while displaying linetypes identically. When you set PSLTSCALE to 0, linetype scales are based on the drawing units where the object was created (in either model space or paper space). Linetypes are still scaled by the LTSCALE factor. When you either change PSLTSCALE or change the zoom scale in a viewport with PSLTSCALE set to 1, you need to do a regen to update the linetype scales in each viewport.

If you want, you can individually set layer visibility in floating viewports. For example, you might have some text or dimensions that appear in more than one floating viewport, but you may not want to show them more than once. Or perhaps you don't want a hatch to appear in one of the viewports. You must be in model space, so double-click in any viewport. To freeze a layer in an active viewport, click the Layer Control drop-down list in the Home tab

You can also freeze/thaw layers in new viewports; these are viewports that you haven't yet created. Choose Home tab

You can change the properties of a layer — color, linetype, lineweight, and plot style — by viewport. For example, you could make a layer that is green in model space display as blue in one of the viewports. This feature is called layer overrides.

To set layer properties for individual viewports, follow these steps:

When you create a layer override, the Layer Properties Manager displays a light blue block in the column for the layer's name, the column for the property you overrode, and the VP column for that property. You see the same block for that layer in the Layer Control drop-down list in the Layers panel on the Home tab. The block only appears when the affected viewport is current. A new layer filter, Viewport Overrides, appears in the Layer Filter list, which displays only layers that have viewport overrides.

You can remove overrides in several ways, depending on whether you want to remove all of a layer's overrides and whether you want to remove overrides in all viewports (as opposed to the current one). To remove an override, open the Layer Properties Manager and do one of the following:

If you have a 3D drawing, you may want to hide back lines for objects in a viewport when you plot (similar to using the 3D Hidden visual style on the Model tab). This procedure lets you hide lines in one viewport but not in others. You don't see the result until you plot or display a plot preview. You can also specify shading and rendered views for each viewport, from both model space and paper space layouts, as shown in Figure 17.8.

To choose the type of shaded view, select any viewport in paper space. Right-click, and choose Shade Plot. Then choose one of the following options:

Figure 17.8. In this drawing, one viewport displays a wireframe, one a hidden view, and one a rendered view.

The purpose of using annotation objects is to automate the process of scaling these objects when you display them at different scales in different viewports. To use this feature, each of the objects needs to be annotative; you add this property when you create the object or its style (such as a text style).

Follow these steps to create and use annotation objects:

Your annotation objects now automatically scale to match the scale of their viewport. If you don't get the results you want, you can check that the viewport scale and the annotative scale match by selecting a viewport and looking on the right side of the status bar. If they don't match, change the annotative scale from the pop-up list; your objects should now scale properly.

Tip

Annotation that applies to the entire drawing, such as titleblock text, can be, and often is, created on the paper space layout. You can change to a text layer and use the DTEXT or MTEXT command, as usual.

Sometimes you create an object in model space — perhaps some text or a logo — and want to move it to paper space, or vice versa. For example, you may want to move a text label that you inserted in model space into your titleblock, which you inserted in paper space. The CHSPACE command makes it easy to move objects from one space to the other, without worrying about scale differences.

To move an object in either direction, follow these steps:

The command scales objects to maintain the same visual appearance. The amount of scaling depends on the scaling of the viewport. If the viewport scale is 1:1, no scaling occurs.

In Chapters 14 and 15, I discussed dimensioning in model space, but you can dimension in paper space, as well. The Trans-Spatial Dimensioning feature automatically adjusts dimensions for the scale of the viewport. These paper space dimensions are fully associative. Dimensioning in paper space has several advantages:

You still need to scale the size of the dimension to your viewport scale, including the text, arrows, and so on, as follows:

When you follow this procedure, all the dimensions using the dimension style that you chose appear the same size on your final plot.

You can create a new drawing by exporting a layout tab. All visible layout tab objects appear in model space in the new drawing. Right-click a layout tab and choose Export Layout to Model (the EXPORTLAYOUT command) to open the Export Layout to Model Space Drawing dialog box. The command creates a default filename based on the current drawing and layout names. You can change the name and location. Click Save. You can then choose to open the new drawing immediately.

To use plot styles, you can add a plot style to an existing plot-style table or create a new plot-style table. Each plot-style table is a separate file. To create a named plot-style table, use the Add Plot Style Table Wizard. You can access this wizard by choosing Application Button

Figure 17.12. The Normal plot style is the default plot style for layers.

To use the wizard, follow these steps:

After you create a plot-style table, you can edit it by adding, naming, and deleting its plot styles (for named plot-style tables only) and, of course, creating the settings that you want for the plot styles. To open the Plot Style Table Editor, do one of the following:

The Plot Style Table Editor's Table View tab was shown in Figure 17.12. The Form View tab is shown in Figure 17.14. You can edit styles by using either view tab. The Form View tab focuses on one style at a time and provides better visual confirmation of some of the choices. The Table View tab lets you compare your style to existing styles as you work.

A new Plot Style Table includes one default style, Normal. To add a style, click Add Style. Then click the style name and type a more descriptive name for the style.

Each plot style has a description area that you can use to provide a more detailed description of the plot style. For example, you could summarize a plot style as "color black & no lineweight."

Figure 17.14. The Form View tab of the Plot Style Table Editor.

Now go through each of the properties and make any changes that you want. In Table view, you need to click the property in the Plot Styles column for a drop-down list to appear. The properties are as follows:

To delete a style, select it and click Delete Style. In Table view, click a style's gray column head to select it.

After you're done, click the Save & Close button.