Beginner at layouts: 2 questions

[EIA]

Hi everyone, we are starting to work with layouts at my office and we are finding it quite a bit troublesome, since we all have been working on model space since the dawn of mankind lol.

 

First of all, related to annotative stuff (many questions about it actually, but this one is the hardest one for me to answer): how do you guys deal with these "ghosts" that appear whenever you have something with more than one annotative scale? Do you just have one for all of them? Say you decide to change the viewport scale; do you change the annotative scale manually on every object in the viewport?

 

The second question is a bit more specific: in order to adapt the way we are working right now to layout space, I find nesting viewports quite useful, having one big viewport for the whole drawing then small viewports for the details, something like this:

 

The thing is, whenever I try entering Viewport 2 by double clicking inside it, it enters viewport 1, is there any way to correct this? I know I can double click the red line to enter to full model space view, but still editing on the viewport context can be really useful.

 

Also, any beginner tip is appreciated, I've not been that active in this forum but the few times I asked for things people have been really nice and helpful, so thank you all!

 

 

[SLW210]

I prefer in most situations to place annotations in paperspace. If annotative scales are needed for some reason, check out SELECTIONANNODISPLAY and set to 0 I believe.

 

Often I can get in the correct ViewPort by clicking, but if the main one activates instead, use Ctrl+R to cycle through them.

 

Change viewports with multiple viewports in one layout

[BIGAL]

The one main thing for me is when your happy with a viewport lock it. Its easy to go inside and edit something doing a pan or zoom then you realise you have stuffed up the look of the viewport. Ok a hint if working metric have the viewports toolbar displayed, when you go into a viewport you will see the current scale displayed, a nice thing is that you can type a number in there and the view port rescales. For metric working in metres 1:100 type 10 it's that simple. 

 

Working on a pick point in model make a layout and viewport at correct scale. Are you metric or imperial, need help with imperial.

 

Some more comments by working in layouts. Goto layout, Plot range layouts, Make Dwg index. Just a few have more. Update revisons, others will hint at more useful functions.

[EIA]

Thank you both for the answers, this really helps a lot.

 

I am curious @SLW210, is there a reason besides having to lead with scales that you go with annotations on the layout itself? The main problem I find with that is, whenever you edit something in model space for whatever reason, you don't get to see how that change on the structure affects the annotations, so you have to check in both model and layout, and this is a big problem for us since our designs are changing constantly. Maybe you just change the drawing through the viewport itself, never using the model space?

[SLW210]

Yes normally I would edit in a viewport, but I also edit in modelspace, if you have everything setup, shouldn't be a problem.

 

Each situation is different, but over the years, for my workload, which varies in disciplines and scope, annotative hasn't worked out well all of the time.

 

Setting up Sysvars correctly helps.

[tombu]

Often we have multiple viewports of the same area of the drawing for different purposes and as most of our drawings need multiple layouts to display and are often displayed at different angles to have annotation on just the viewports it's intended putting annotation in paper space makes more sense. Keep in mind until you've finished adding all objects to the drawing you don't know what space is available for annotation so I've always done annotation last so I never have to move it or figure out what size text to use.

[EIA]

OK, so basically both have their pros and cons, I was afraid that one could clearly be superior but I guess I will try both to see what fits better to how we work. Also yes, I've seen from testing as well that it is important to leave annotations for the last thing, especially after finally defining the scale of the drawing. Thank you both!

[ReMark]

At the company I worked for all the geometry was drawn in Model Space.  Any text, dimensions, notes, and legends were included in Paper Space.  The system worked great for us.  I would suggest doing a side-by-side comparison of each method (annotation in model space vs paper space) and decide for yourself which works best for you.