Getting a Closer Look with Zoom and Pan

The example drawing in this chapter is pretty uncluttered and small, but most real CAD drawings are neither of those. Technical drawings are usually jam-packed with lines, text, and dimensions. CAD drawings often get plotted on sheets of paper that measure two to three feet on a side — that's in the hundreds of millimeters, if you're a metric maven. Anyone who owns a monitor that large probably can afford to hire a whole room of drafters (and therefore isn't reading this book). You need to zoom and pan in your drawings — a lot. I cover zooming and panning in detail in Chapter 12. Quick definitions should suffice for now:

• Zoom means changing the magnification of the display. When you zoom in, you move closer to the drawing objects so you can see detail, and when you zoom out, you move farther away so you can see more of the drawing area.
• Pan means moving from one area to another without changing the magnification. If you've used the scroll bars in any application, you've panned the display.

Zooming and panning frequently lets you see the details better, draw more confidently (because you can see what you're doing), and edit more quickly (because object selection is easier when a zillion objects aren't on the screen).

Fortunately, zooming and panning in AutoCAD is as simple as it is necessary. The following steps describe how to use AutoCAD's Zoom and Pan Realtime feature, which is pretty easy to operate and provides a lot of flexibility. Chapter 12 covers additional zoom and pan options.

To zoom and pan in your drawing, follow these steps:

1. Right-click in a blank area of the drawing and choose Zoom from the shortcut (right-click) menu.

   The Realtime option of the ZOOM command starts. The crosshairs change to a magnifying glass, and AutoCAD prompts you at the command line as follows:

   Press ESC or ENTER to exit, or right-click to display shortcut menu.

2. Move the crosshairs near the middle of the screen, press and hold the left mouse button, and drag the mouse pointer up and down until the base plate almost fills the screen.

   As you can see, dragging up increases the zoom magnification, and dragging down decreases it.

3. Right-click in the drawing area to display the Zoom/Pan Realtime menu (as shown in Figure 3-10), and choose Pan from the menu.

   The magnifying-glass pointer changes to a hand.

4. Click and drag to pan the drawing until the plate is more or less centered in the drawing area.

   You're not moving the plate, although it may look like it. You're moving your viewing position while the plate stays put. Never move drawing objects if you just want to view them from a different position.

   You can use the right-click menu to toggle back and forth between Zoom and Pan as many times as you like. If you get lost, choose Zoom Original or Zoom Extents to return to a recognizable view.

   

   Figure 3-10: The Zoom/Pan Realtime right-click menu.

5. Right-click in the drawing area and choose Exit from the Zoom/Pan Realtime menu.

   Thehand pointer returns to the normal AutoCAD crosshairs.