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There have been a few times in the past where I had to work on someone else's drawing and they had overlapping viewports with the viewport frames turned off. Their drawing filled the entire space within the title block border, so I double clicked inside the border to get into model space but was unable to select anything inside the smaller viewports. Talk about frustrating. I finally figured out what they had done but it took me a minute to realize there were other viewports on top of the main viewport.

The one situation that causes me worry about overlapping viewports is when neither has enough blank space to keep the model geometry from overlapping. I go to an extra page for that one. There's too much overhead in time needed to set up a screening mask or wipeout in modelspace on a special layer that only hides stuff in one viewport while being frozen in all the others. Then suppose somebody else has to edit that sucker, with a giant invisible background color wipeout or hatch hiding half the universe.

Using that in the drawing I'm working on now. Never had an issue that way.

I agree with Tombu about avoiding viewports on top of viewports. I don't know of any known issues caused by doing this, it's just my own personal preference. For something like this, I would create a polygonal viewport for my main view so I can create a space for my smaller viewport.

There's no such thing as an "angle guide" in AutoCAD. Do you mean your Polar Tracking was turned off?

try setting UCSFOLLOW to 0 dJE

I have all my viewport frames on a layer with the plot icon clicked to "X". Frames are sometimes nice to have but viewports never seem to fit each other, so I draw the frames if needed. My prior office standards didn't require any, but sometimes they help. i got used to none so I carried it over into retirement for my own hobby templates.

(command "._-SCALELISTEDIT" "_Reset" "_Yes" "_Exit") This will reset the current scale list but it will not change to Metric defaults. I don't know of a way to change the defaults. I would've thought this would be in the "UserPreferences" ActiveX object, but no property is exposed for this in Visual Lisp as far as I can tell. Maybe it is settable in the Registry? EDIT - As far as I can tell by my research. There is no way to reset Metric defaults via Lisp. What other users have done is just write a program to recreate the entire scale list to their choosing, even if to match the default scale list. See the attached file I found on the Autodesk Forums - not sure who the original author is. scalelistreset.lsp

I'd go KISS on this one and set up a template drawing with my "custom" scale list already in it. No lisp required.

Instead of (command "_move" (ssget "_x" '((0 . "INSERT")(2 . "*legend*"))) "" "0,0" "23.1,21.0451") create the selection set first then test sslength > 0 before using a command on it.

The modelspace objects are probably just zooming off to one side or the other. While you are in paperspace zoom in to basically fill your screen with the smaller viewport. Activate the small viewport and zoom extents to get you centered up again. Then use Zoom Window so your objects will always be in the center of the view after zooming. It may take a few windows when you are that far away from your stuff. Once you are closer in go back to the wheel. Make sure you are actually active in the correct viewport. I don't completely enclose one viewport within another if I can help it just to make it easier. You can use Ctrl+R to cycle through your viewports till you hit the correct one. But I simply drag one edge of the smaller viewport until it is outside of the larger viewport. It doesn't matter to me whether it is dragged inside or outside the paper edge because I don't plot my viewport frame. Now I can click into and out of the non overlapping area without the viewport gremlins getting out of hand. Then if I like, I can drag the edge back where my OCD is more happy with me If you use Ctrl+R, always type PSPACE or dbblclk out of the last viewport when you are done. You don't want to leave viewports open. Video memory is reserved for them and can affect system performance.

Just post one of the simplest routines if you want it fixed. The solution to the rest will probably be the same.

Make sure polar tracking and dynamic input are turned on.

@Acey You may be referring to dynamic input. Give the dynmode command and set it to 1 and see if that restores the feature you are looking for.

There are hundreds of system variables, and they control all sorts of things, including the user interface. These variables can get turned on and off by code without notice. It's a good idea to become familiar with these variables, if only to protect yourself from erratic behavior such as you're seeing here. OP may be referring to polar tracking, as tombu notes, or it could be the crosshairs, or something else. Without a picture or other information, it's hard to tell. Welcome to the forum, Acey. The more information you can give us, the better we can help you.

use the 'expert' variable