AutoCAD For Dummies, 17th Edition

Chapter 12

Planning for Paper

IN THIS CHAPTER

Setting up paper space layouts

Looking into viewports

Examining details at other scales

Working in paper space

Most of this book revolves around setting up and using the model space environment that is an infinitely large (or at least 10⁹⁹ units across), three-dimensional realm in which you create your gleaming towers, tomorrow’s wondrous electronic gadgetry — or everyday garden sheds, angle brackets, and doorknobs. You may, however, have picked up a hint here and there that AutoCAD has a whole different parallel universe available to you, known as paper space.

The final product of all this setup, remember, is a printed drawing on a piece of paper. In most industries, paper drawings are legal contract documents, so they need to be easy to read and understand. In the first part of this documentation process, you configure the layout of the sheet in paper space, which I explain in this chapter. For the actual process of outputting either model space or paper space layouts to printer or plotter, see Chapter 16.

Chapter 2 introduces you to the two parallel universes of model space and paper space, and Chapter 4 explains how to configure model space for efficient drawing. This chapter explains how to set up layouts in paper space for efficient plotting.

Model space is the drawing environment that’s current when the Model tab (not the Model ...