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I've been bombarded with
information on the new sheet set tools in AutoCAD 2005 based products for
several weeks now. This is fine and dandy if your level of available
time is open ended. This new concept and set of utilities makes your
life a lot more complex than it needs to be most of the time. Use the Sheet
Set manager if your projects warrant it's use though.
This week I will remind or introduce you to a very powerful and useful
command that isn't mentioned much in tutorials or tips and tricks pages.
Why, is it not talked about much, you ask? Maybe because of the fact
that the more you learn about this tool, the more complex it gets.
We're talking past the complexity of the polyline and polyedit commands
here.
The tool in question is the Mvsetup command. This tool is invaluable
for setting up nice compositions of viewports in paperspace as well as a
host of other options. It expands tenfold on the Mview command.
The MVSETUP command can be used in the Model tab or Layout tabs for many
uses. I'll mention a few here to get you started and by the end of the
list you should be breathless or screaming, "Why didn't I use that command
years ago!".
- The drawing units can be set
with this tool.
- A polyline can be created in the
model tab to replicate your paper size scaled up to match a set scale.
- The limits will match the
polyline created.
- Objects in one viewport can be
aligned (panned) to match that of another.
- you can rotate an absolute
rotation for the view from a chosen base point. Much better than the
UCSfollow trick. I think it's using the Dview Twist option. Be
careful, this "rotation" is not listed in the Properties dialogue box.
- Multiple viewports can be
created and arrayed with spacing set differently on the vertical or
horizontal.
- A classic engineering layout of
four viewports: Top, Front, Right side, and Southwest Isometric, can be
automatically created in your layout tab! You can even choose the
spacing between?
- Title blocks can be inserted
that are created on the fly as simple entities or as a saved file on your
hard drive! It can be an Xref too!
- There's even an occasional
prompt to erase any unneeded entities!
Wow. Legacy commands sure are
missed sometimes. There are no menu pull-down listings for Mvsetup,
you just need to keep reading this link once a week to find out about these
hidden tips and tricks I know about. Unfortunately, I only tease you
once a week, no book yet. Don't forget to look at the archives.
See you next week! |
