VW11 Viewport Tweaks

[Chris D]

I've now had VW11 for a week or so. It's good....but could be better...here are some early suggestions to do with viewports and Design/Sheet Layers...

1. A Duplicate function for Sheet Layers. Bizarrely this is not included...so you spend ages setting up your sheet and viewport and page setup...and can't copy it for your next 10 sheets. Doh!

2. Now that we have Sheet Layers with individual page/print setups, the use of page setup on Design Layers will be greatly reduced. Can we have a toggle to turn off the print window outline in Design Layers...it's annoying, always has been.

3. When I switch to a Sheet Layer...why on earth would I want to maintain the zoom/view I was using on a Design Layer? When a sheet layer is made active, the view should zoom to the print window.

The viewport handily saves my class/layer combinations, but I would still need to use the old saved views (was saved sheets) feature to be able to flick though my drawing sheets and see them sat nicely on the screen.

Flawed logic NNA.

[Guest]

Chris,

Can you explain number one in a little more detail?

Do you want to duplicate the sheets within a drawing, or save a sheet set to be applied to other drawings, or do you want the ability to duplicate viewports and put the duplicates on other sheets, or do you want to apply the sheet settings of one sheet to the toher sheets in the drawing?

2. The page/print setup takes on the default settings of the page and print setup under the File menu. If you want to save time by not entering the information for page and print setup, set the information under File>Page setup and Print before creating the sheets.

3. When switching from one layer to another, the zoom has always, and still is maintained. If you switch to a sheet layer and have it set to 100% like you suggest, when you move back to the design sheet, would you want it to stay at 100% zoom or the last zoom the design layer was accessed at?

[Chris D]

Katie, thanks for your prompt response:

1. - The ability to duplicate the entire Sheet Layer and everything on it, including viewports.

e.g. If I have set up an A1 drawing sheet, with a viewport of a ground floor plan, I want to simply copy the entire Drawing Sheet, Viewport and Page Setup to a new Sheet Layer for the first floor plan. I can then just switch which Design Layer the viewport is looking at, and notch up the drawing number on the drawing sheet.

(It works like that with AutoCAD layout tabs..)

I want a Duplicate button in the Layers dialog, just like on the Classes dialog

2. I think you misunderstood my point

I simply want to turn off the grey box that represents the print window while working in Design Layers. I don't need it anymore because I'm not printing from Design Layers. In fact I don't need a page setup at all for Design Layers, but there is always a default setup and always a grey box.

It's the box itself which is annoying as people mistake it for an object on the screen. I want a toggle to turn it off.

3. To switch back to the last zoom used in a Design Layer.

It's flawed logic that equates zoom in a Design Layer with zoom in a Sheet Layer. Conceptually, one is a virtual building, the other is a piece of paper. Why would the zooms have any relationship?

Again (sorry), there is no zoom relationship between paperspace and modelspace in AutoCAD, or the equivalents in ArchiCAD or Revit.

[Andrew Bell@NV]

You'll be happy to know that both the option to hide the page bounds on design layers and separate zooms for design and sheet layers are already on NNA's wish list.

It might be possible to write a script to duplicate a sheet layer.

[CipesDesign]

Chris D, I agree with you about zoom. Because my SHEET LAYERS will always be what used to be called "saved sheets", I would like it if when I selected a SHEET LAYER the view would be of the PRINT AREA of that SHEET LAYER. In the meantime I've just made a SAVED VIEW of each of my SHEET LAYERS. It's a little redundant (or overlapping?) but not too terrible. My biggest problem is that it's a bit yoyo-like being pulled in two directions with the mouse. I can't decide if I want the SHEET LAYER pulldown at the bottom with the saved views, or the SAVED VIEWS at the top with the layer pulldown...

Peter

[Conrad]

another tweak

we set up sheets to print on a 24x36 one page to

a wide format plotter. Batch prints works just fine

we then want to print the same set to a desktop 11x17 printer (both hp)

from our experience so far

we choose one of the sheet layouts

when then from "print setup" cnage to 38% to get the reduction of the 24x36 to 11x17 and maintain a scale

only the visible sheet changes

which then make "batch print" useless

a whole new set of sheet layout has to be redone

which is where a duplicate button would work

[Damo]

Another feature I would like to see included is the ability to scale dimensions within the advanced viewports properties box. This would scale the text string and lines/tick so that a dimension on 1:10 an 1:50 would look exactly the same on the sheet layer.