You may already know that if you double click inside a viewport that is on a layout tab you will be able to work in model space even though you are in paper space. This is known as working in “Floating Model Space.” But you also may know that if you do this and your viewport is NOT locked, you will mess up your viewport scale when you zoom in & out and when you pan.
Fear not – here is a way to be in paper space and activate an unlocked viewport and still be able to work in model space and not mess up your viewport scale:
Simply double-click the frame of the view port. You will be thrown into what looks like model space but you will notice that there is a red striped frame around the drawing area. You can also use a command to achieve this. It is VPMAX <enter> then select the viewport border to maximize it. When you are finished, the command to exit is VPMIN <enter>. There is also a new button at the bottom of the status bar that has the similar red stripes around it. Click on this to exit as well.
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Hi Friend…
i’ve read this article. i found a new knowledge from your blog.
very good, helpful & applicable. :)
regards from me. cheers
c&s drafter
Thanks for the compliment.
~Greg
HELPED ALOT I WAS DOUBLE CLICKING EVERYWGERE
I have been confused by why this happens when I double-click on a viewport, and I didn’t know how to get out of it except ctrl-z (or undo) until I read this post! Thank you for posting! (sorry for adding a comment to an old thread) What is the benefit of VPMAX though? Isn’t it doing the same thing that just switching to model space does?
I don’t see any benefit from using the VPMAX/VPMIN commands as you have mentioned – it is easier to jump over to the model tab and work. But I think that it was there so that people could have a maximized view of of working in a viewport.
~Greg
The advantage of this is that is remembers VP Freeze and other viewport specific modifications. I don’t use it much, but I work with one drafter that uses VP Max and Min and never uses the regular modelspace. If you go to his modelspace it is covered with layers and layers of material for separate pages of his plans. This strategy is very good for if you have a page set up for each layer of architectural detail and want to both see what you’re doing and allow pages you’re not messing with to be ready to print immediately.
So with the red border it won’t let me set the scale for the viewport. Would you know how to fix this problem…?
Ryan, That isn’t the purpose of these VPMIN and VPMAX.
If you want to set the scale of a VP, simply select the VP and check to see if it is locked, if so, unlock it and then set the scale in either the status bar or the properties palette.
~Greg
How do I disable this feature, it drives me nuts. It takes forever to regen in bigger drawings.
So how do you make it so the double click into/out of works? I know it’s a sys var but can’t seem to find any documentation that describes which sys var is fubar’d in the settings. I can double click to edit text, mtext, etc. So, double click works. I’m on ACAD LT 2014 so it’s not the old quickpix that’s causing the problem as it used to. It used to work, but our IT guy just reinstalled windows and ACAD on this computer and it’s not working now so something got munged up. Very annoying to not double click into a vport to edit stuff. Thanks!