Layouts and viewports

What it does

These are CapCad's tools for the sheet side of the drawing: scale, viewports, layout tabs and the view.

The group splits into three subjects:

• Scale and format (CAPCAD_DEFINE_SHEET): find the scale at which the drawn area fits on a sheet, and apply that scale to the viewports.
• Viewports and tabs (CAPCAD_LAYOUT_*): bulk operations on the current layout's viewports and on the drawing's tabs.
• The view (CAPCAD_DRAWING_FOCUS, _FROM): synchronise the framing between open drawings.

CAPCAD_DEFINE_SHEET — scale and format

The command looks at which space you are in and opens a different form:

In paper space: read and write the viewport scale

The paper-space form. The line between 2 and 3 shows the 1 printed cm = X meters(s) readout after an extraction. This capture is of a Portuguese session; the numbering is the same in both editions and the table gives the English captions.

Just below 1 sits the text readout: 1 printed cm = X.X meters(s) — how many metres of ground fit into one printed centimetre (the scale divided by 100). Only the extraction fills it in.

In model space: what scale fits on what sheet

The "Sheet" tab: the area measured in model space at the top, the format table below. The grey boxes of the A0–A4 grid are read-only.

The A0 to A4 grid between 12 and 13 is not numbered because its boxes are created while the form is being built. Each row carries, for its format: the sheet width and height in millimetres, the exact scale and the usual scale.

How the scale is computed:

1. The sheet loses its margins: usable width = width − Margin width; usable height = height − Height.
2. The model-space area is compared with the usable sheet area on both axes: model width ÷ usable width and model height ÷ usable height (the sheet in metres, that is, millimetres ÷ 1000).
3. The worse of the two wins, that is, the larger — the one that makes the whole drawing fit.
4. The usual scale is the first value on CapCad's ladder that is strictly greater than the exact one: 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 25, 50, 100, 200, 250, 500, 750, 1000, 1250, 1500, 2000, 2500, 5000, 10000. Past 10000 the column stays empty.

An example: an area of 300 × 180 m on a landscape A1 (840 × 594 mm), no margins. By width, 300 ÷ 0.840 = 357.1; by height, 180 ÷ 0.594 = 303.0. 357.1 wins, and the usual column shows 1:500.

The A-series sheets the table uses (width × height, in mm):

The Articulation tab

The "Articulation" tab: the road back — from paper to ground.

This is the articulation sum: with a 380 mm window at 1:1000, the rectangle in model space is 380 m across.

Viewports

Four commands act on every viewport in the current space at once, with no selection asked for. The layout's "general" viewport — the one that stands for the sheet itself — is always spared.

CAPCAD_LAYOUT_VIEWPORT_TOGGLE — one or two viewports in model space

Works in model space only: in paper space it answers Use in Model Space and stops. If there are two viewports side by side it goes back to one; if there is one it splits the screen in two with a vertical cut. This is the same split the native VPORTS command produces.

CAPCAD_LAYOUT_VIEWPORT_FRAME_DRAW — the viewport frame in model space

Must be run in paper space and outside any viewport; otherwise it warns You mustn't be inside a viewport to use this command.

Ask it to select the viewports and it draws, in model space, the rectangle each one sees: centred on the view centre, with the paper-frame dimensions divided by the scale, and rotated by the viewport's twist angle. When it finishes, a dialog reports how many were created.

This is the sheet-articulation drawing: with every frame in model space you can see what each sheet covers and where the gaps fell.

CAPCAD_LAYOUT_VIEWPORT_FRAME_ZOOM — frame the screen by a rectangle

The other way round. The command asks for polyline... and expects you to click a four-vertex rectangle in model space — typically one of the frames the previous command drew. It then:

1. Resets the UCS to world;
2. Sets a three-point UCS aligned with the side between the second and third vertices of the polyline;
3. Runs PLAN, putting the screen parallel to that UCS;
4. Zooms to the window between the second and fourth vertices.

In other words: the screen ends up framed and rotated exactly like the matching sheet. An entity that is not a polyline, or a polyline with fewer than four vertices, is ignored silently.

Layout tabs

The view between drawings

Both commands carry the current framing (the rectangle the screen shows, computed from the view centre, the view height and the screen aspect ratio) from one drawing to another. Both start by making sure the current drawing is in model space.

With exactly one other drawing open, the command acts straight away. With none or several, it opens the Select dwg window: a list of the other open drawings, with the hint "Select other dwg to zoom into — Tip: if only 2 dwg's are open, this step is skipped". Clicking a name runs it and closes the window.

Remembered between sessions

Nothing. No command on this page writes preferences. The Format definition values (margins, custom format, measurements) survive only while the form stays open — it is modeless and keeps a single instance, so running CAPCAD_DEFINE_SHEET again in model space brings back the form already filled in rather than opening another.

Notes

• The Select dwg window always pushes the view. When CAPCAD_DRAWING_FOCUS_FROM falls back to the list (because more than one other drawing is open), clicking in the list sends the view from here to there instead of bringing it back. To pull, leave only two drawings open.
• The Lock it box on the paper-space form is not available in this version. Use CAPCAD_LAYOUT_VIEWPORT_LOCK.
• The Set ViewPort in PaperSpace button is not available in this version, and the button next to it (17) has no caption — only its tooltip explains that it draws the selection's bounding box.
• The A sheets are rounded. The table uses 840 mm where the standard gives 841 (A0 and A1). The difference is irrelevant for choosing a scale, but do not use these values to draw the sheet border itself.
• The usual scale is always the one above. An exact value of 500.0001 already jumps to 1:750. That is deliberate: the scale has to be larger than the exact one for the drawing to fit.
• The viewport commands act on the current space. Run in model space they find no layout viewports and answer 0 viewport(s)…. Activate the layout tab first.
• Two form titles and two tab names are not translated. Format definition, Scale definition and the Sheet and Articulation tabs read the same in every language — as does the usual column header.

See also

• Layout Navigator — the palette that lists, groups, renames and reorders the layouts these commands act on.