Expert: Bill DeShawn - 10/19/2009

Question
QUESTION: Hi, I am using AutoCad 2008 and drawing a plan of a commercial property with manholes and stormwater sewer lines that are to be taken over by the City Council. The Council requires the plan to be locked on to the underlying grid so that the services can be added on to their master plan. The grid references are in New Zealand Transverse Mercator Projection. The original drawing was created with 1 unit = 1mm. To align with their grid I had to change the units to 1 unit = 1metre. Having done that I was able to align the services and boundary pegs with their grid in a model space plan but when I tried to find it in paper space it doesn't appear to be there. I suspect part of the trouble is the change of units as paper space seems to have the drawing as a tiny speck. On one attempt I managed with the help of VIEW ZOOM ALL or EXTENTS to bring up the rectangular outline of the plan but no plan within this box. I then did an EDIT COPY from MODEL SPACE to an EDIT PASTE in PAPER SPACE which seems to have fixed the problem although I haven't tried printing yet. It also sounds a bit of a funny way to do things. Can you advise the correct procedure. My experience level is not particularly high and up until now I have generally avoided getting involved in PAPER SPACE and LAYERS but am attempting to up my skill level. Any help you can give would be greatly appreciated.

ANSWER: I am assuming that you have a title block in paper space that you usually use when drawing in Imperial units.  If that is correct, then I would think that its size and scale need to change.  If you are doing this job for a company that is located outside the U.S., it also might be advisable to use a paper size that they would use in that country.  Find out from your end user what scales they are used to working with, and pick the one that will fit the best on the sheet size you or they select for use on this project.  Design your title block to fit on that sheet size with about a 25 mm margin at each edge.  Use this table
http://www.draftsperson.net/index.php?title=Standard_Paper_Sizes
as a reference.  The reason you want to use metric sheet sizes is because you want to be able to send a PDF file to the foreign client so they can print it on their paper over there.  Sizes A0 and RA0 look the best to me.  A0 would be easier to handle in the field than RA0, but sometimes the bigger size is necessary.  There are two schools of thought on how to plot drawings.  One is to scale the title block 1:1 and plot everything 1:1 in paper space and set your viewport scale factor to the reciprocal of the scale factor of what you want your drawing to me.  Doing that, you will have to set PSLTSCALE to 0.  The other way is to scale up your title block to your plotting scale and set your viewport scale to 1xp. Most people in my area (in Portland OR don't do it that way, but I've learned to do it that way because that's what my boss does and it's no problem for me.  This might take a few tries to get it right, but once you get a successful combination, take good notes so you can do it again next time.

Let me know how it goes

Bill DeShawn
http://my.sterling.net/~bdeshawn


---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: I am based in NZ and a mate has recently set up a title block in paper space for me. The size and scale is complicated by the fact that I have been creating my drawings in Model Space for A1 size and plotting from Model space and changing the scale to suit the drawing contents 1:100, 1:50 etc.The bulk of my drawings are drawn with millimetres as units. The Council job requires the drawings to be in metres as units and when you try and scale the drawings between the two by a scaling factor of 1000 the drawings are very hard to pick up. Added to the limited knowledge I have of using paper space and I am struggling. I think I need to create a new drawing from scratch with metres as units A1 as size and see how I go from there. I am also struggling to find clear directions on how to create viewports with a different scale to the nain drawing. Any hints?
Once again thank you for your quick response,
Regards Ross

Answer
Ross:
Use Model Space for drawing to exact size.  Paper space can be used for plotting to a scale.
So, if you want your sheet to reflect a scale of 1:100, the zoom factor of the viewport in paper space needs to be 0.01xp.  It's a little tricky.  When setting up the scale factor of the viewport, make sure at least one edge of the viewport is visible on screen.  That way you can double-click on the paper space side of the viewport to get into paper space, because you may need to do that before you zoom out to look at the whole picture.  Either that or set your view of the viewport in paper space to see the whole viewport before you change the zoom factor.  The zoom factor is entered in two ways:  at the command line and at the Properties Palette or dialog.  In the Properties palette, enter the Custom Scale.  From the command line, while the viewport is active, type Zoom, then a value adding on the XP suffix to tell AutoCAD that you want the scale to be relative to the scale of paper space.  The values will vary depending on how you use your title block.  If you don't scale your title block for the different paper sizes (which is probably the easiest way), then plotting scale should end up being a reciprocal of the viewport scale, as I show above.  When doing that you may find it necessary to set the PSLTSCALE system variable to 0 so that the linetypes will appear correctly.  After the zoom factor or custom viewport scale is set correctly, it is highly recommended to lock the display of the viewport so that you can zoom in and out while the viewport is active without changing its custom viewport scale.

Let me know how it goes
Bill DeShawn
http://my.sterling.net/~bdeshawn