Tip 1018: Use the split screen feature to speed up copying and moving tasks
When you find yourself doing lots of panning and zooming, you may be able to save time by splitting your screen into two or more panes. I was in this situation today when I was transferring details from a group of sheet-type layouts to a detail library. One of the shortcomings of working on a computer is the limited amount of area you can see at one time–even if you have a large monitor and/or a two-monitor system. This leads to a lot of panning and zooming. Excessive panning and zooming can lead to headaches! And dizziness. Not to mention lost time.
There are two basic ways to use the split screen in AutoCAD. The first is when you have only one file open, and you want to have a close-up view of two separate areas. In this case you use the Viewport tool. In the ribbon, go View tab/Viewports panel/Two: vertical, for example. This gives you a view like this:
To activate a pane, just click once inside it. You can move or copy objects from one pane to the other very easily using the AutoCAD Copy or Move command. Just remember to set the base point in the “source” pane, then click once in the “destination” pane to activate it, then click to set the destination point (AutoCAD calls this the “second point”) in the second pane.
The second method is to split the screen to show two DWG files at the same time. To do this, open the two files, and close all other files. Then in the ribbon, go View tab/ Windows panel/Tile Vertically. The screen will look something like this example:
You can tile the windows horizontally by choosing the Tile Horizontally button.
In this second method, unlike the first method, you cannot copy or move between the two panes. You can, however, use the Windows clipboard, or the Copyclip or Cutclip and Pasteclip commands, to move or copy objects between the two panes. The shortcut keys are:
- Cntl-C to Copy to clipboard
- Cntl-X to Cut and add to clipboard
- Cntl-V to Paste from clipboard
You can also open three or more panes on your screen using either the first or second method. Just chose the appropriate button from the list.
So give your eyes a break. When you zoom in and zoom out until you are totally zoomed out, use the split screen feature. Things will pan out much better.
Keep on CADDing! 🙂
Mark
Thats great information, thank you ♥♥♥
This tip is very useful as I couldn’t remember how to do split screen in AutoCAD, and neither could anyone else, however now I have opened two views of the same drawings to enable me to draw elevations from a plan by projecting construction lines up, whenever I click from one view to the other it changes the screens to show the same view! how do I stop the second view I click into from mimicking the first?
Also, I have used LT version of AutoCAD and this command is simply done by clicking the view manager button and a list of screen splitting options appears and you simply click the one you want, and when using them they stay as the view you want. is there a way to make that happen in the full version of AutoCAD?
Thanks in advance.
Alan, thanks for the question. I am not sure why one viewport’s view would change to match the other viewport when you click it. Here is how I set up two side-by-side viewports to see different parts of one DWG file. In 2016 AutoCAD, I click on the View tab > Model Viewports panel > Viewport Configuration flyout menu, and from the list I select Two: Vertical. This gives me a left viewport and a right viewport, which can be zoomed independently to view different parts of the model. The zoom setting of a viewport should not change simply because you click in it. Hope this helps!
Hi Mark,
Thanks for your reply. That is how I am getting two views of the same DWG model view but I have subsequently discovered why the view was changing when I clicked into it. when I click between views it was zooming extents and regenerating and that is because the ‘Update view to plan when UCS is changed’ box was ticked in ‘coordinates/UCS’, but is was only doing the above for one view which was down to only one of the views having this ticked which means that each view need to the done separately.
Again thanks for your assistance and will get in touch with Best CAD tips again if any thing comes up.
Great tips for AutoCad users! I usually use this: http://www.coreldraw.com/en/pages/dwg-file/ to edit .dwg files because i find it much easier