Okay.
Welcome back.
So now we're going to look at just a bit more about how we use our mouse and how we view and things
like that.
So first thing we want to talk about is the mouse.
And most people will have a mouse of some sort.
Now, I recommend for this course you have a kind of basic three button mouse.
And by free button I mean a left button, a right button and a middle wheel stroke button.
Okay.
So if you can get those, if you don't already have them, it will make following along with this course
much, much easier.
I think most people have that.
What tends to happen is people have more advanced mouse with buttons everywhere.
Later on, when you get used to the software, you can program commands to the extra buttons.
But for so much variety in mice out there, it'd be impossible for me to go through various settings
and it'd be very confusing.
So we're just going to go back to basics for this and we're going to use a left button, a right button
and a middle button with the middle button also being a wheel.
Okay?
And I'll show you how how you can use that.
Now, in the previous chapter, we set up the right click, if you remember, and that's all about this
kind of right clicking, which we're going to do.
And throughout the course you're going to see me do that early on in the course.
I'm going to point out what I'm doing.
Then as we progress, you should know what I'm doing, whether I'm right clicking, left clicking,
and it's a very intuitive way of working.
So you'll you'll be able to follow along.
Okay.
Right.
So in order for me to demonstrate the viewing and the zooming and things, I need something on my screen.
So I'm going to draw a basic rectangle.
Okay.
We're going to in the next couple of chapters, we're going to go over in more detail creating objects.
So you don't necessarily need to follow on with creating these objects yet.
But I do need something on my screen just to demonstrate the zooming and things.
So up here we have our draw commands and we have one which is Rectangle which is here.
So I'm going to left click that and I'm just going to select anywhere on my screen.
I'm going to left click and it's going to ask me for another corner and I'm going to left click again.
Simple as that.
Okay, now I've got a rectangle on my screen.
So.
The way I'm doing this, I'm kind of moving that about.
This is called panning.
Okay.
And you may know this from other software, so I'm sorry.
I'm going I am going back to the beginning, just so we're all on the same page.
And I'm doing this by holding down that middle wheel on my mouse.
So if you press that middle wheel and hold it down, you'll see the cursor turns into a hand and with
it held down, when you move your mouse, you will kind of pan that along.
Okay, now you're not moving that rectangle.
What you're doing is you're moving the view.
So if you imagine the camera's pointing at the rectangle, you're panning the camera around.
So if there was other objects here and again, don't worry so much about what I'm doing, it's just
a demonstration.
So if I was to pan, I'm not moving the individual rectangle.
If I was moving it.
It would be doing that and the other.
So so what I'm doing is I'm panning the view again, Don't worry about these, what I'm doing with the
rectangles.
We're going to get into that in a minute.
I'm just demonstrating the view.
So I'm panning that view now with a middle wheel, you can also roll the wheel and that will allow you
to zoom in and out.
Okay.
So it's that mixture of panning and zooming in and out that we use all the time to move around our drawing.
And they used to be.
Well, there still is of a view command viewing windows and viewing.
We do use those not as much as we used to these days with the mice.
It's mainly done with the wheel.
And if you see someone doing CAD experience user, you'll see them panning and zooming all day long.
Okay.
The only other main one is if let's say you got something down here and you've been working away down
here.
Okay.
And you pan along.
Oh, and now you're a bit lost where you are.
You're panning around.
Where's my drawing?
Okay.
What you can do if you double click that middle wheel quite fast.
It zooms out to extents and zoom extents just means I'm going to zoom out to the extent of your model,
your drawing.
So everything in this file on this screen, it will zoom out to encompass all of that.
Okay.
And that's great.
If ever you do get kind of lost, you know, sometimes you can end up down here and you're looking for
your you can just double click and that will zoom there.
So that's so you've got zoom, pan and extents and that's all controlled by that same middle wheel.
Okay.
One thing you may notice on my screen and you may or may not have it on yours, is you can see these
faint kind of grid lines here.
This is it's known as grid for obvious reasons.
It's AutoCAD way of helping you work out what the measurements of units are.
If you see the more you zoom in, the more your grid kind of separates down into smaller grids.
Some people like it, some people don't.
To be honest, it's one of those things that used to be used a lot more than it's used now.
It is quite faint.
Sometimes I work away without even registering it.
Okay.
If it gets in your way or you don't like it, you can turn it on and off with this here.
So that's probably how most people work now with the grid off again, because it's so faint sometimes
I just don't forget it's even there.
And don't turn it off.
So you'll see me working with it on.
It's just because I don't actually I don't mind it.
I just kind of block it out.
But it has no use really for me.
So you can turn it off when you start working in paper.
Then it can get in the way because you're working with a white background.
When I do turn it off because it's much more noticeable.
But if you don't know what I mean by working in paper space, just don't worry about that.
That's something you'll do later in your course.
The main thing I would say is.
If I turn it off, I'll just get used to it being there and ignoring it.
And that's the grid.
And that's basically it with views at the moment.
There is a view cube up here.
We're going to look at that.
That's a bit complicated for now.
This will get you through 90% of what you need in terms of views, just zooming, panning and zooming
extents.
Okay.
So in the next chapter, we'll look more on selecting objects.