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Understand the Layout Process
When you use a named layout to prepare your drawing for output, you follow
a series of steps in a process.
You design the subject of your drawing on the Model layout (in model space)
and prepare it for output on a named layout (in paper space).
There is one Model layout and one or more named layouts in a drawing. A
drawing always has at least one named layout.
Before you can use a layout, it must be initialized. A layout does not contain
any page setup information before it is initialized. Once initialized, layouts
can be drawn upon and output.
Process Summary
When you prepare a layout, you typically step through the following process:
■ Create a model of your subject on the Model layout.
■ Initialize a named layout.
■ Specify layout page settings such as output device, paper size, drawing
area, output scale, and drawing orientation.
■ Insert a title block into the layout (unless you have started with a drawing
template that already has a title block).
■ Create a new layer to be used for layout viewports.
■ Create layout viewports and position them on the layout.
■ Set the orientation, scale, and layer visibility of the view in each layout
viewport.
■ Add dimensions and annotate in the layout as needed.
■ Turn off the layer containing the layout viewports.
■ Output your layout.
You can also use objects if you want to annotate your drawing in model space
and scale the annotations automatically. For information about using
annotative objects and scaling annotations automatically, see
Scale Annotations
on page 656.
The other topics in this chapter provide additional detail on how to create,
use, and modify layouts and layout viewports.
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