Datasheet
Panning and Zooming to Adjust Your View ■ 27
Dynamic This changes the display to an overall view. A rectangle also appears, which
lets you select an area to which to zoom in. To change the size of the rectangle, click the
rectangle. You can adjust the size of the rectangle and thus change the size of the zoom
area. Click again to fix the rectangle size. Right-click, and choose Enter to zoom in to the
selected area.
Scale This lets you zoom in or out by a specific value. It allows you to enter a specific
view scale.
Center This allows you to center a location on the screen.
Object This lets you select a view area based on the area occupied by an object. For
example, if you want to zoom in so that a particular object fills the display area, use this
option.
In This is the same as using the Scale option and entering 2x to magnify your view two
times.
Out This is the same as using the Scale option and entering 0.5x to view twice the cur-
rent view area.
You’ve just about completed your first look at AutoCAD. You’ll want to know about
just a couple of other features. In the next section, I’ll introduce a display feature in Auto-
CAD that helps you set up your drawing for printing.
AccurAte PAnning
Realtime Pan is a great tool for quickly getting around in a drawing, but sometimes you
need to pan in an exact distance and direction. A version of the Pan command lets you
“nudge” your view to an accurate distance.
In the Menu Browser, choose View
➔
Pan
➔
Point, and you’ll see the following prompt:
Specify base point or displacement:
This is the prompt you’ll see for the Move or Copy command, though in this case you’re
not affecting the objects in your drawing. When you select a point at this prompt, you’ll see
a rubber-banding line in conjunction with the next prompt:
Specify second point:
The rubber-banding line indicates the direction and distance of your pan. As with any
other command that displays a rubber-banding line, you can select points to indicate
distance and direction, or you can enter coordinates. This enables you to specify exact dis-
tances and directions to pan your view.
You can also start a zoom or pan by clicking the magnifying glass icon or hand icon in the
status bar, or right-click and select Zoom or Pan at any time. You can right-click in the middle
of a zoom to switch to pan and vice versa.
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