248 Part II: Let There Be Lines

5.Right-click in the drawing area and choose Exit.

The Zoom or Pan Realtime cursor returns to the normal AutoCAD crosshairs.

In the preceding example, you started with zooming and ended with panning. You also have the option of doing the reverse: Click the Pan button on the Navigation bar, and after you’ve panned, use the right-click menu to switch to zooming. However you start it, the important thing to realize is that Zoom and Pan Realtime is a single AutoCAD function. At any time, you can switch between panning and zooming (or switch to a related function, such as Zoom Window) by using the right-click menu.

The scroll wheel or middle mouse button zoom and pan operations described in the preceding list depend on an obscure AutoCAD system variable named MBUTTONPAN. When MBUTTONPAN is set to 1 — the default value — you can use the middle button to pan and zoom as we describe earlier. Unless your system has been customized by someone, if you change MBUTTONPAN to 0, clicking the middle mouse button displays an Object Snap menu at the crosshairs, as it did in older AutoCAD releases. If you can’t zoom or pan with your middle mouse button, set MBUTTONPAN back to 1. (With MBUTTONPAN set to 1, you use Shift+right-click to display the Object Snap menu at the crosshairs.)

Zooming and panning by using the mouse wheel is the easiest, most interactive way to get around in your drawings. In some situations, though, this method is less efficient or precise than the old-fashioned methods, the most important of which we describe in the next section.

Another way to pan in AutoCAD should be familiar from other Windows programs — the scroll bars in the drawing area. Scrolling is the same in AutoCAD as in any other Windows program; click the arrows in the right and bottom scroll bars on the borders of the drawing window to scroll, or pan, a step at a time; or click and drag the little scroll boxes to pan as little or as much as you want to. To turn scroll bars off or on, choose Options in the Application Menu (or type OPTIONS or OP) to display the Options dialog box. On the Display tab, select or deselect the Display Scroll Bars in Drawing Window check box. Our own preference is not to use scroll bars and thus regain the screen space they occupy, so that’s why you don’t see them in most figures in this book.

Time to zoom

Realtime zooming is good as far as it goes, but you get much more control over the display if you use some of ZOOM’s alternative methods. Because zooming is such a frequent activity in AutoCAD, it’s worth knowing some of those alternative ways of doing it.

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Chapter 12: A Zoom with a View 249

In addition to the Navigation bar button we describe earlier, you’ll find tool buttons for all the ZOOM options on the View tab’s Navigate 2D panel (this panel is called, simply, Navigate in AutoCAD’s 3D Modeling workspace). The magnifying-glass button has a menu — click the down arrow beside the magnifying glass, and a menu with the other options opens (see Figure 12-3).

Figure 12-3: A menu for magnifying.

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250 Part II: Let There Be Lines

The ZOOM command has 11 different options, the most important of which are the following:

Extents and All: Zoom Extents (the button with the four-headed arrow and the magnifying glass) zooms out just far enough to show all the objects in the current drawing. Zoom All (the button showing the sheet with the folded-over corner) does almost the same thing. It zooms to show the rectangular area defined by the limits, or it zooms to show the extents, whichever is larger. These two options are especially useful when you zoom in too close or pan off into empty space and want to see your entire drawing again.

It’s a good idea to Zoom All or Zoom Extents and then save the drawing before you close it. By performing these steps, you ensure the following:

•The next person who opens the drawing — whether it’s you or someone else — can see the full drawing as soon as they start working.

•If you’ve accidentally copied some objects way beyond where they should be, Zoom All or Extents will make them show up so you can delete them.

•The drawing preview that appears in the Select File dialog box displays the full drawing, instead of just a tiny, unidentifiable corner of it.

Window: This option is great for zooming in quickly and precisely. It zooms to a section of your drawing that you specify by clicking two points. The two points define the diagonal of a window around the area you want to look at.

Note that the ZOOM command’s Window option is not a click-and-drag operation — unlike in some other Windows programs and, confusingly, unlike in the Zoom/Pan Realtime Zoom Window option. With the ZOOM command’s Window option, you click one corner, release the mouse button, and then click the other corner.

Entering the shortcuts Z A, Z E, and Z W (note the mandatory space between the letters) at the keyboard is usually faster than trying to find them in the various menus or toolbars.

Realtime: Realtime zooming, the technique described previously, enables you to zoom in and out by starting a realtime zoom and then dragging the magnifying glass cursor up (to zoom in) or down (to zoom out).

Previous: This option undoes the last zoom and/or pan sequence, taking you back to where you started. You can repeat this to step back through previous views, even if you do other object creation or editing in between.

Object: This option zooms in close enough to show selected objects as large as they can be displayed onscreen. Using ZOOM Object is like putting the selected objects under AutoCAD’s microscope.

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