Zoom

the zoom command is quite simple but it can be very complicated there are very many choices to choose from but yet most of us use only two and that’s fine the zoom command is the act of moving closer or farther away from your drawing data in order to get a different view it doesn’t change your drawing in any way not the line work not the information in it just how you’re looking at it there are many ways to zoom you can go to the ribbon
click on the View tab then the navigate panel
get to zoom this way which are right here the Zoom button on the ribbon is in a fly out and you have all of your different options of zooming we’ll take a look at these here very quickly or you can just type the word zoom 0 om on your command line and then you have all of your options available to you now let’s take a look at each one
extents
this will zoom you to the maximum all extents of all the objects so if I’m zoomed in really close right here and I come up and hit zoom extents zooms me all the way out so that I can see everything so that it fills up my screen I can draw a line up here
window to zoom in to that little spot and then come back to my zoom extents and boom it zooms it up
now if i delete that object my stents are now down here not up there so if i go to zoom extents that’s where it will take me zoom extents is a great one it helps you to zoom all the way out so you can see everything in your files that now you can zoom back in to specific spot a great way to zoom to a specific spot is with the zoom window now if I want to zoom into just this area here I pick one point and it creates a box wherever this box is that’s where I’m going to zoom to it will fill my screen with that box and there you go
that’s cool
another one is previous this will just take you back to your previous zoomed state it’s a great way to go back and forth I can do a real-time zoom this will let you to zoom in and out in well real time so you have a magnifying glass with the plus and minus i will click a spot and move my mouse forward or backwards up or down
left and right really doesn’t do it it’s up and down
and we’ll zoom me in in real time let go I can pick another spot and zoom in and out there
that’s another way if you want to go back and forth kind of like a sports commentator going back and forth these rooms in zoom shout these oom is in a zooms out and you get the idea I can zoomed all this will zoom to all visible objects that are in my file again it’s very similar to a zoom extents but it’s different so let’s do some stuff here to show you this is my zoom extents now I can turn some of these things off okay now this is all that I’m going to be able to see let’s go back to my view tab
the zoom window
zoom in to this little green box zoom extents will take me out to the extent of my drawing and zoom all all of my objects are
pretty cool
undo this stuff put everything back on you can see they’re slightly different and honestly I never really use the zoom all the zoom extents I use all the time now the dynamic zoom is a little different it sort of does a zoom extents and then allows you to create a new window so this is nice and that you can make a small window and then move it around pick where you want to go so if I’m zoomed in really far I can do two things
I can zoom extents
and then
window
to get to where I want to go let’s several steps several commands but I do a zoom dynamic
it automatically zooms me out and then I can zoom in to where I want to go I need to slightly position my box where I want click and then drag to the right to make it bigger and I move up or down to kind of change my position a little bit this will resize your box find your point click it again then I can move it to where I want it to go if I want it to go right here it can right click and it will zoom me right in so let’s do that again but a little bit more quickly and less commentary
so I can do a couple of commands in one way and I don’t have to zoom all the way out pan across and zoom back in I can just zoom out and zoom in so that’s kind of cool I can zoom by a scale factor I can just type something in
by a factor of 10
want to scale it again I can do a decimal
so the decimal will make things look bigger and our whole number will make things look smaller
and I can zoom center
put in my magnification and
so just zoom me into that spot and Center it on my screen
some can be a little difficult not really useful a lot of times but it’s there zoom object is really cool because then you can pick an object or objects press center and it zooms you right in so this is cool if I’m you know zoom extents I’m Way out and I want to go to zoom object say that box enter and boom it takes me right to it I don’t have to guess I how big my window needs to be or anything it just finds it and takes me there
and these are real time zoom in and out it just zooms in a little bit or assumes out just a little bit so those are
nice for little presentations that you’re doing if you’re presenting to a client we had a big conference that you can use those as you can get to all of those commands if you type in the word zoom all of those are available here now whichever fly out for the zoom that you used last it will be available right here in the button so you can just click the button and it will take you there now another way to zoom is with your scroll wheel on your mouse and this is very simple in the majority of time this is all you’re going to need you may never come to this button at all but you can if you want
so much easier that was
wherever I put my mouse or the cursor that is the focus point for my zooming so you just scroll your scroll wheel roll it in roll it out
that’s very useful and it’s also a transparent command so if I draw a line then I can zoom in
and draw the rest of my line
and if you double-click your scroll wheel that’s a zoom extents
stents and the zoom in and out the majority of your zooming needs are done with your scroll wheel throw in the pan command and I can navigate to anywhere very quickly
now another quick thing to do is to type in the zoom command hit W for window and there you go
and with a command alias of just Z I can go z w very quickly or Z and e / extents I can navigate through that very quickly as well so the most of your zooming and panning needs you’re navigating needs in AutoCAD will be done with your scroll wheel or you do have available a plethora of zoom type options that you can use