Don't forget to move back to model space afterwards. If you need to make changes to the arrangement of your viewports or to make changes to the drawing sheet you have to move back to paper space using the PSPACE command, View Paper Space from the pull-down menu. Any changes you make to the drawing in one viewport are simultaneously made in the other viewports. The current active viewport is shown with a thick white border. Only one viewport can be active at any one time. You can move from one viewport to another simply by clicking on it. Once in model space you can work within each viewport as if it were the normal drawing area. Once you are happy with the arrangement of viewports (remember you can overlap viewports) you can move to model space by using the MSPACE command, View Model Space (Floating) from the pull-down menu. If you do not want the border to plot, you must create a new layer("VIEWPORTS" would be a good name) specially for the viewports which you can turn off prior to plotting.Ĭreate more viewports as required. Tip: The viewport border is drawn on the current layer. These viewports can be moved, scaled, copied and stretched just like any AutoCAD entity. Using the MVIEW command, View Floating Viewports 1 Viewport from the pull-down menu, simply pick two corners of a rectangle to define your view area. You are now in a position to create one or more model space viewports. Centre the rectangle on your screen by using the Zoom Extents command. Create a new layer called something like "SHEET" and then draw a rectangle 420 x 297 drawing units (this is the correct size of an A3 drawing sheet in millimetres). You could start out simply by drawing the rectangular outline. Once you are in paper space you can draw an A3 drawing sheet. This is to let you know that you are now in paper space. Once you have done this you will notice that the UCS icon in the bottom left corner of your screen changes to a triangle. To create the paper space page you must set the tilemode variable to 0, you can do this by double-clicking on "TILE" on the status bar at the bottom of the screen. The exercise also discusses some other Paper Space considerations such as plotting to scale from Paper Space and layer display in viewports. This exercise is designed to help you create an A3 drawing sheet in Paper Space and to add floating viewports. AutoCAD's paper space mode is a bit like having a page in a scrapbook onto which you can paste different views of your AutoCAD drawing.