Graphics Programs Reference
In-Depth Information
Setting up the Drawing Size
Now that you have changed the units to Architectural, the drawing area is
approximately 12
″
to 16
″
(500 mm) wide and 9
″
(300 mm) high. You can check
this by moving the crosshair cursor around on the drawing area and looking at
the coordinate readout, as you did in the previous chapter.
TIP
When you change Decimal units to architectural units, one
Decimal unit translates to one inch. Some industries, such as civil engineer-
ing, often use Decimal units to represent feet instead of inches. If the units
in their drawings are switched to architectural, a distance that was a foot
now measures as an inch. to correct this, the entire drawing must be scaled
up by a factor of 12.
The drawing area is defined as the part of the screen in which you draw. You can
make the distance across the drawing area larger or smaller through a process
known as
zooming in or out
. To see how this works, you'll learn about a tool called
the
grid
that helps you to draw and to visualize the size of your drawing.
the Grid
The AutoCAD grid is a pattern of horizontal and vertical gridlines that mimic
the appearance of a sheet of graph paper, and is used as an aid to drawing. You
can set the grid to be visible or invisible. The area covered by the grid depends
on a setting called Drawing Limits, explained in the section “Setting Up Drawing
Limits,” later in this chapter. To learn how to manipulate the grid size, you'll
make the grid visible, use the
ZOOM IN
and
ZOOM OUT
commands to vary the view
of the grid, and then change the area over which the grid extends by resetting
the drawing limits.
Before doing this, however, let's take a look at the icon that sits in the lower-
left corner of the drawing area. This icon is known as the UCS or User Coordinate
System icon. Some users consider the UCS icon to be a distraction when working
in 2D, and choose to turn it off. Because the UCS icon does provide a relatively
unobtrusive visual cue to how we're looking at the drawing, this topic will keep it
turned on although it's not necessary to have it turned on until Chapter 10 when
we begin our discussion on 3D.
a diagonal arrow
in the lower-right
corner of a ribbon
panel (such as the
one seen on the
Coordinates panel)
will take you to the
settings for that
group of tools.
1.
From the View tab
➢
Coordinates panel on the Ribbon, click the small
arrow at the bottom-right corner of the Coordinates panel to open the
UCS dialog box. If you pause the cursor over the arrow, you'll see a
O
Search WWH ::
Custom Search