Named Views have been in AutoCAD since the early days – and their power is undeniable! AutoCAD 2019 has truly ramped up their value with some time savers and added paper space features. There’s a reason the AutoCAD gurus have Named Views in their arsenal – lets take a look at the new AutoCAD 2019 features!
What are Named Views?
Just to make sure we are all on the same page – let’s start off with the basics…what is a named view? A named view is a saved view of a drawing that you can zoom directly to at any time. Originally used in very large drawings when zooming was a long and painful process, now they are used more frequently for strategic reasons. To make it simple – imagine a floorplan where you had a saved view of each room…the bedroom, kitchen, bathroom, dining room, etc. Rather than zoom and pan to each room – you would simple restore the named view and go directly to the intended area.
Well I’m a panning and zooming pro – why would I bother? Here’s the kicker…you can also save the layer settings with a named view. Not only will it take you directly to the desired view – but it will also restore the layer settings saved with the view. Do you have a specific UCS you’d like to save with this view? It can do that as well! Imagine the possibilities! AutoCAD 2019 also allows you to quickly drag and drop these Named Views onto layout tabs as viewports (or MVIEWS.) Now if that isn’t AutoCAD power…I don’t know what is!
How do you create a Named View?
If you are using AutoCAD 2018 or prior, you’ll need to create a new Named View in the View Manager. This can be found on the View tab in the ribbon.
After entering the View Manager – simply select the New option to enter the New View dialog. This is where the magic begins!
Please note that you can make this very complicated if you’d like…or you can keep it simple. I highly recommend you keep this simple. This dialog can also be used to create cinematic views with complicated shot properties…that is not our goal today (or probably ever!). We are simply going to assign a name to our view and define the window for our view (in most cases). I don’t need to set up a view category unless I go view crazy and have too many to keep track of them (which is highly doubtful!) I have never created so many views that I felt the need to categorize them (but I’m sure someone out there has).
If you wish to save the layer snapshot with the view you will need to click the down arrow to find the “Save layer snapshot with view” option. This is a very powerful advantage of using named views and is not to be taken lightly. Imagine restoring a named view and having the layers automatically flip on and off for you!
Once again – you can make this complicated with sun properties, live section options and sun properties. No need! As mentioned, there is one more very cool feature hidden in there which will come in handy for those of you who rotate your UCS. You can also save your current UCS (or any other saved UCS’) with the view. So when you restore a view you can have it restore the layers and the UCS at the same time – crazy valuable!
In AutoCAD 2019 you don’t need to go to the View Manager to create a new view – you can use the New View tool and cut to the chase (saving at least two steps!) as seen in figure 5.
Restoring Named Views
So how do you restore a Named View? There are many ways! In AutoCAD 2019 – you can use the handy drop-down list (View tab) to quickly go from one Named View to another as seen in figure 6.
In previous releases – you can navigate from one saved view to the other in the View Manager, or you can use the in-canvas viewport controls in Model Space as seen in Figure 7.
Named Views are very, very powerful when set-up correctly! Set your views up in your template files and let the productivity meter soar!
