Fine-Tuning Your View

Fine-Tuning Your View
Back in Figure 6.4, you may have noticed that parts of the burners don’t appear on the display. To move
the view over so you can see all the burners, use the Pan command. Pan is similar to Zoom in that it
changes your view of the drawing. However, Pan doesn’t alter the magnification of the view the way
Zoom does. Rather, Pan maintains the current magnification while moving your view across the drawing,
just as you would pan a camera across a landscape.

Quick Array Copies with Grips
Sometimes the Array tool can be overkill if you only need to make a few evenly spaced copies. Fortunately,
grip editing offers a feature that lets you quickly make evenly spaced copies. Here’s how it’s done:
1. Press the Esc key to make sure you aren’t in the middle of a command; then, select the objects you
want to copy.
2. Click a grip point as your base point.
3. Right-click your mouse, and select Move.
4. Ctrl+click a location to place a copy of the selected object. This first copy will determine the interval
distance for additional copies.
5. Continue to hold down the Ctrl key and select additional points to make copies at regularly spaced
intervals.
The copies snap to the distance you indicate with the first Ctrl+click point in step 4. You can use osnaps
to select a distance based on the position of another object. Once you’ve made the first copy with the
Ctrl+click, you can release the Ctrl key to make multiple copies at random intervals. Another option is
to use Polar Snap while making grip edit copies. With Polar Snap, you can enter a specific distance for
the intervals. See Chapter 3 for more on Polar Snap.

To activate the Pan command, follow these steps:
1. Click the Pan Realtime tool on the Standard toolbar, choose View  Pan  Realtime, or type
P↵. You can also right-click and choose Pan from the shortcut menu. A small hand-shaped
cursor appears in place of the AutoCAD cursor.
2. Place the hand cursor in the center of the drawing area, and then click and drag it downward
and to the left. The view follows the motion of your mouse.
3. Continue to drag the view until it looks similar to Figure 6.6; then, release the mouse button.



4. To finish the kitchen, you want a view that shows more of the drawing area. Right-click to
open the Zoom/Pan shortcut menu, and then choose Zoom. The cursor changes to the Zoom
Realtime cursor. The Zoom/Pan shortcut menu also appears when you right-click during
the Zoom Realtime command.
5. Place the cursor close to the top of the screen, and click and drag the cursor downward to
zoom out until your view looks like the top panel of Figure 6.7. You may need to click and
drag the Zoom Realtime cursor a second time to achieve this view.
6. Right-click the mouse again, and choose Exit from the shortcut menu. You’re now ready to
add more information to the kitchen drawing.
TIP To exit the Pan Realtime or Zoom Realtime command without opening the shortcut menu,
press the Esc key.
This exercise showed how you can fine-tune your view by easily switching between Pan Realtime
and Zoom Realtime. After you get the hang of these two tools working together, you’ll be able
to quickly access the best view for your needs. The other options in the shortcut menu—Zoom Window,
Zoom Original, and Zoom Extents—perform the same functions as the options in the View
drop-down menu.
TIP The Zoom Window option in the Zoom/Pan shortcut menu functions in a slightly different
way from the standard Zoom Window option. Instead of clicking two points, you click and drag
a window across your view.



While we’re on the subject of display tools, don’t forget the scroll bars to the right and bottom
of the AutoCAD drawing area. They work like any other Windows scroll bars, offering a simple
way to move up, down, left, or right in your current view. They also come in handy for quickly panning
your view in one direction or another.
If for some reason the scroll bars don’t appear in AutoCAD, or if you prefer to turn them off,
open the Options dialog box (choose Tools  Options), click the Display tab, and make sure that the
Display Scroll Bars In Drawing Window option is either selected to turn them on or cleared to turn
them off.