Saving Views

Saving Views
Another way to control your views is by saving them. You might think of saving views as a way of
creating a bookmark or a placeholder in your drawing.
For example, a few walls in the Plan drawing aren’t complete. To add the lines, you’ll need to
zoom in to the areas that need work, but these areas are spread out over the drawing. AutoCAD lets
you save views of the areas you want to work on and then jump from saved view to saved view.
This technique is especially helpful when you know you’ll often want to return to a specific area of
your drawing.
You’ll see how to save and recall views in the following set of exercises. Here’s the first one:
1.
Choose View 
Zoom 
All, or type
Z
↵
A
↵
to get an overall view of the plan.
2.
Choose View  Named Views, or type V↵ to open the View Manager dialog box.



TIP In the View Manager dialog box, you can call up an existing view (Set Current), create a new
view (New), or get detailed information about a view. You can also select from a set of predefined
views that include orthographic and isometric views of 3D objects. You’ll learn more about these
options in Chapter 20.
3. Make sure the Current option is selected in the list to the left, and then click the New button
to open the New View dialog box. You’ll notice some options related to the User Coordinate
System (UCS) plus an option called View Category. You’ll get a chance to look at the UCS
in Chapters 20 and 21. The View Category option relates to the Sheet Set feature described in
Chapter 28. Other options, including Visual Style, Background, and Boundary, give you control
over the appearance of the background and layout of a saved view. For now, you’ll
concentrate on creating a new view.



4. Click the Define Window radio button. The dialog boxes momentarily disappear, and the
Dynamic input display turns on.
5. At the Specify first corner: prompt, click two points to place a selection window
around the area around the elevator lobby, as shown in Figure 7.4. Notice that the display
changes so that the white area shows the area you selected. If you aren’t satisfied with the
selection area, you can place another window in the view.



6. When you’re satisfied with your selection, press ↵ or right-click. The dialog boxes reappear.
7. Click the View Name input box, and type Elevator Lobby for the name of the view you just
defined.
8. Click the OK button. The New View dialog box closes, and you see Elevator Lobby in the
Views list.
9. Click OK to close the View dialog box.
10. Let’s see how to recall the view that you’ve saved. In the 2D Navigate control panel, click the
drop-down list, and select Elevator Lobby.



Your view changes to a close-up of the area you selected in step 5. You can also open the View
dialog box, select Elevator Lobby from the view list, click Set Current, and click OK.
TIP If you need to make adjustments to a view after you’ve created it, you can do so by following
these steps: Right-click the view name in the View Manager dialog box, select Edit Boundaries,
and then select a window as you did in steps 5 and 6.
TIP Remember that when no command is active, you can right-click the Command window and
then select Recent Commands to repeat a recently issued command. You can also right-click the
drawing area when AutoCAD is idle and repeat the last command.
If you prefer, you can use the keyboard to invoke the View command and thus avoid all the
dialog boxes:
1. Choose View  Zoom  Extents, or type Z↵E↵.
2. Enter –View↵S↵ at the Command prompt, or use the –V↵S↵ shortcut. (Don’t forget the
minus sign in front of View or V.)
3. At the Enter view name to save: prompt, enter Overall↵.
4. Save the Plan file to disk.
As you can see, this is a quick way to save a view. With the name Overall assigned to this view,
you can easily recall the Overall view at any time. (Choosing View  Zoom  All gives you an overall
view too, but it may zoom out too far for some purposes, or it may not show what you consider
an overall view.)
TIP Another useful tool for getting around in your drawing is the Zoom toolbar. It contains the
Zoom Window, Dynamic, Scale, Center, Object In, Out, All, and Extents tools. To open the Zoom
toolbar, right-click any toolbar, and choose Zoom from the shortcut menu.

Opening a File to a Particular View
The Select File dialog box contains a Select Initial View check box. If you open an existing drawing with
this option selected, you’re greeted with a Select Initial View dialog box just before the opened file
appears on the screen. This dialog box lists any views saved in the file. You can then go directly to a view
by double-clicking the view name. If you’ve saved views and you know the name of the view you want,
using Select Initial View saves time when you’re opening large files.