Explore the intricacies of controlling the movements of objects in your CAD 301 plan model using the control key and the arrow keys. Understand how to shift objects, check the outer bounds, and effectively use the zoom window to reach the right view scale and the viewport freeze to hide specific layers when needed.
Key Insights
- In a CAD 301 plan model, the control key along with the arrow keys allows you to move and shift an object to achieve the desired placement.
- The 'zoom window' feature allows you to adjust the view to the correct scale by selecting the right corners of the viewport. Improper use of the zoom window can result in a wrong view scale.
- The 'viewport freeze' feature is valuable when you need to hide specific layers from certain viewports, particularly when working with drawings at different scales. It allows for a more streamlined and clean design process.
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Alright, so let's jump back into the CAT301 plan model and take a look at these no plots once again. So I'm going to go into CAT301 plan model and let's start up here with the fireplace. Remember that you can always select an object and then using the control key, hold down control, click on the arrow keys and that object will move, will be shifted around just slightly.
So in this case, I'm holding CTRL and I'm shifting this over to the right. I want to see that this line the second line in is going to be outside of my brick. So I'm holding CTRL and I'm shifting and you'll notice that we're actually going to cut this wall off.
It's not possible to catch both of these walls fully at this scale. So that's going to work. And like I said, I want to shift this down.
So again, I could use the move tool. In this case, I'm using CTRL on my keyboard and the arrow keys and I'm going to shift this down just so that the top of the brick and the bottom of the tile is roughly the same amount of space between the no plot on each side. Escape, escape, escape to deselect.
Let's come down into the kitchen and do the same thing. So I'm going to select the no plot, holding CTRL. I'm going to shift down again.
I'm looking at this wall so that it goes above this second line. It's okay to be within the first line of the no plot. Remember, we're shifting the viewports in.
So I held CTRL and shifted this down. If your drawing already looked like that, that's great. You don't need to adjust.
But in this case, I shifted down. I'm checking my outer bounds. This wall is right inside of the most inner line of my no plot and the brick is just outside of the most inner line.
So I'm actually gonna hold CTRL and I'm just gonna shift to the right two clicks. All right, escape, escape, escape. I think that looks great.
Again, we talked about these bathrooms not needing too much. In this case, I want to show just a tiny bit more of that door. So I'm going to hold CTRL and shift over to the right just a bit.
Hit escape, escape. And this no plot is in the exact right place that I need it. If you needed to shift yours, go ahead.
But I like where that one is for my drawing. I'm gonna zoom extents, CTRL S to save, and jump back over to CAD 301 A202. When I do that, we're going to see that we have a reload option.
I don't need to compare the changes. I know what I just changed. So I'll uncheck that box, hit reload.
And you'll see that while the CAD geometry of the floor plan didn't shift, the no plots shifted slightly. This one we didn't change. We're gonna leave that exactly where it is.
But in this case, I'm gonna zoom into this, double click, unlock, and roll out just a bit. Now, this is going to be a zoom window. And we know that because we've been doing it in the past.
But in this case, we are not grabbing the outermost corners of our zoom window. In this case, the no plot has been drawn to this corner and this corner. So the viewport is smaller than the total no plot.
Let's make sure we're grabbing the correct corners when we do the zoom window for the next three views. So Z enter, W enter for zoom window, shift right click end point. Here to the shift right click end point.
Here. Again, you'll know that you get this right. If you see your scale, and this one's half inch, I'll lock my viewport, double click out.
Let's see what happens if I were to, I'm gonna unlock, do the zoom window to the outermost bounds. Z enter, W enter, shift right click end point to the outer corner, shift right click end point to the outer corner. You'll see that I can clearly see that I'm getting too much of the no plot.
But when I come down and check the scale, it is obviously the wrong view scale. So let's try that one more time. Z enter, W enter, shift right click end point.
It's this corner, shift right click end point. Again, I can hold on to this line because I've done my oSnap override. Check my scale, lock the viewport, double click out.
Last one's over here. We just shifted this slightly to the right, but I'll do the whole workflow just to be safe. Z enter, W enter, shift right click end point to the shift right click end point.
That's this corner right here. Lock it if you have the correct scale, double click, zoom extents, and control X to save. All right, in this video, I want to continue by hiding the layers we do not need for these drawings.
Now in this case, the quarter inch dimension scale is not required in all of our viewports. If I come up to my layer properties, hit the drop-down, and I take a look at our ANO dims layers, we see that we have 96,48,24, and 12. The 12 is going to be used in these three views because one inch equals one foot.
That's a scale factor difference of 12. We know 48, we've used it a lot for quarter inch. The 24 is going to be used at the half inch scale.
And we have one additional 96 that'll be used on the roof plan, which is going to be drawn at an eighth inch scale. Now in this case, I can turn off the 96 and the 48, and you'll see the dimensions disappear from the entire drawing. When we go in and draw the 12 and the 24, it's going to be slightly different.
We are going to want to use a viewport freeze, and I will show you what that means, but it's this button right here, freeze or thaw in the current viewport. So I'm going to turn 48 back on. I'm going to turn 48 back on and let's see what that viewport freeze button does.
When I am not in any viewport and I hit viewport freeze, nothing will happen because we're not in a viewport. When I go into a viewport, however, I'm now activated in this current view. You see my crosshairs clipped by that bold pink line.
I can come up, find DIMS 48, and use viewport freeze. That will hide that layer only in the active viewport. When I click out, we can see that that layer is still on in all of the other viewports.
This can be very helpful, especially when you're working with drawings at different scales. If we, for instance, had this drawing at quarter-inch scale instead of half-inch scale, we would need those dimensions viewed. It's not likely that that would happen in this case, but especially when we're going to draw the 12 and 24 scale dimensions, they could overlap depending on how your detailed views are drawn.
So remember that viewport freeze, while not necessary in this specific workflow, is very helpful for hiding specific layers just from this viewport or that viewport. For now, go ahead and turn off A. Anno DIMS 48 entirely, even if you already froze it in a few viewports, that's okay. Now it's hidden for the whole drawing.
When we draw the 12 and 24 inch dimensions, when we draw the 12 and 24 scale factor dimensions, we will also use viewport freeze in case we see any additional dimensions pop up on the screen. The same thing can be done with your symbols layers. You see here we have SIMS 24.
That's going to go in this view, and when we draw our keynotes in the floor plan, you'll see them appear later in the course. So just keep that in mind as we continue in the Keep that in mind as we continue with these drawings. We're going to go dimension these at the correct scale now, and we'll come back in and make sure our drawing continues to be clean.
Go ahead, zoom extents, CTRL S to save, and I'll see you in the next video.