Graphics Programs Reference
In-Depth Information
5.
Click the viewport border to expose its grips.
6.
Click a grip, and move it to a new location. The viewport view conforms to the new shape.
The new viewport shape gives you more flexibility in isolating portions of a drawing. This
can be especially useful if you have a large project that is divided into smaller sheets. You can
set up several layout views, each displaying a different portion of the plan.
What if you want a viewport that isn't rectilinear? This exercise shows you how to create a
circular viewport:
1.
Erase the viewport you just modified.
2.
Draw a circle that roughly fills the layout.
3.
Choose View
Viewports
Object from the menu bar. You can also type
-V PORTS
↵
O
↵ (letter
O
, not the number zero).
4.
Click the circle. The plan appears inside the circle, as shown in Figure 15.15.
FIGURE 15.15
A circular viewport
To simplify this exercise, you were asked to draw a circle as the basis for a new viewport.
However, you aren't limited to circles; you can use a closed polyline or spline of any shape. (See
Chapter 17, “Drawing Curves,” for a detailed discussion of polylines and splines.) You can also
use the Polygon tool to create a shape and then turn it into a viewport.
If you look carefully at the series of prompts for the previous exercise, you'll notice that the
Object tool invokes a command-line version of the Vports command (-vports). This command-
line version offers some options that the standard Vports command doesn't. The following
options are available with the command-line version of Vports:
-vports
Specify corner of viewport or [ON/OFF/Fit/Shadeplot/Lock
Object/Polygonal/Restore/Layer/2/3/4] <Fit>:
You used two of the options—Polygonal and Object—in the two previous exercises.
