24
AutoCAD and Its Applications—Advanced
NOTE OT TE
You can also change the viewpoint to one of the orthographic or
isometric presets by using the
VIEW
command to access the
View
Manager
dialog box.
Once you select a view, the viewpoint in the current viewport is automatically
changed to display an appropriate isometric or orthographic view. Since these presets
are based on the WCS, selecting a preset produces the same view of the object regard-
less of the current user coordinate system (UCS).
A view that looks straight down on the current drawing plane is called a plan
view. An important aspect of the orthographic presets is that selecting one not only
changes the viewpoint, but, by default, it also changes the UCS to be plan to the ortho-
graphic view. All new objects are created on that UCS instead of the WCS (or previous
UCS). Working with UCSs is explained in detail in Chapter 4. However, in order to
change the UCS to the WCS, type
UCS
to access the
UCS
command and then type
W
for the
World
option.
When an isometric or other 3D view is displayed, you can easily switch to a plan
view of the current UCS by typing the
PLAN
command and selecting the
Current UCS
option. The
PLAN
command is discussed in more detail in Chapter 3.
Figure 1-11.
There are four preset
isometric viewpoints
in AutoCAD. This
illustration shows
the direction from
which the cube will
be viewed for each
of the presets. The
grid represents the
XY plane of the WCS.
NW Isometric m
SW S Isometric
NE Isometric
Isometric SE E
Figure 1-12.
Selecting preset
views using the
View
panel in the
Home
tab of the ribbon.
Pick to
display the
View Manager
dialog box
Orthographic
preset views
Isometric
preset views