Okay, so now we're going to look at model space and paper space.
This is one of those things in AutoCAD that a lot of people can struggle with.
I still work with companies and people now who don't use it properly, who seem to have given up even
trying because they do it in bizarre ways to get around it.
It's a very simple concept, and like most of these things, once you grasp it, you'll never forget
it.
And once you start using it properly, you realize why we need to do that.
A lot of people don't see the point in having a different space in model space and paper space, but
that's because they're the kind of.
The way they get around it makes the drawing worse and makes a people's life more difficult.
You'll see why, and I'm going to explain it, hopefully in an easy way to grasp.
Okay.
But first, what we're going to do, we're going to open in the resource file, the Building zero one
drawing, which is our building layout.
I'll close the properties for now.
So in AutoCAD, as you've seen, we always draw actual size, whether it's something a small mechanical
piece.
Or which is actually going to show us 1 to 1 actual size on the paper, or it's a layout of a large
building or even a something like a retail park, which is huge.
Maybe it could be something.
It could be a city, it could be miles and miles wide.
It doesn't matter.
We draw that actual size in terms of units.
Okay, Now your units might be set to miles or meters or millimeters, but it's still going to be drawn
actual size.
So this building, for instance.
I'm going to go.
We have a tool up here.
If we haven't looked at it already, depending on what course you're doing, we've got this measure
tool.
Okay.
Um, I would say this is another one of those things where AutoCAD tried to improve.
It's not necessarily improved it a bit.
It has got a tool for measuring and if you click this arrow, you can measure the distance, the radius,
the angle, the area of volume, but then it's got a standard button, just measure and that will AutoCAD
will try and guess what you're measuring.
The problem is it can be a bit resource hungry and if you've got a busy drawing, sometimes it doesn't
help.
So I tend to use the distance.
If you pull this down, you've got a distance measuring tool and it's just a ruler.
Okay, so now you can click on two points and you can measure distance and our distance is 20,000mm.
Okay?
So 20m.
In other words, this building is 20m wide.
Now, if you were to print that actual size, you would need a very big printer to print something 20m
wide.
So you would put that on a sheet of paper, whether it's an A4 sheet, A3, whatever size paper you're
going to print on, you would have to show it to scale and we'll look at scales.
But the concept is you would show it smaller than actual size.
However, it's drawn to actual size.
You don't want to start drawing things to the size that you're going to print it.
If you was going to print this out on a piece of paper so that it was only ten centimeters wide on a
sheet of paper, you don't want to be having to do that calculation.
Oh, okay, I'm going to draw this.
It's actually going to be ten centimeters wide.
Therefore, this room isn't.
It needs to be.
And you've got you know, if you see what I mean, you'd have a a calculation to do every time you created
a new object.
How that would scale down.
You don't need to do that in AutoCAD.
You shouldn't do that in AutoCAD.
It defeats the whole object of using AutoCAD.
You may as well be using something like paint or PowerPoint.
Okay, AutoCAD is a precision drafting tool and you draw everything at actual size.
So we draw this at 20m wide the way it wants to be.
And then what we do, we have everything here drawn to actual size, and this is known as our model
space.
So this is our model, our model of our building created to actual size in model space.
We've got a black background here and we've got if you look at these tabs, this one says model.
So we are in the model space where everything is created actual size as per the real world.
We also have these layout tabs.
Now ignore the fact there's two of them.
Okay, we're only going to work with one.
If you click this layout tab here, you'll see the screen.
The background has gone white and this is known as paper space.
When you're in these layout tabs, this is paper space.
What we're seeing now is how it will print out.
It's kind of like a print preview, but you can work in this space.
So if I do the measure again and I measure this distance.
This black line here and these blocks with the text.
This is called a title block.
So this is what you will print out which will tell you what your drawing is going to tell us.
It's the building plan, the date, the initials, maybe a drawing number, blah, blah, blah.
So if I measure the distance here, it's 261mm.
So that's that's probably that's going to fit on a piece of paper from my printer.
26cm.
Okay.
So again, this sheet is designed.
To fit an A4 piece of paper at 26cm and it measures 26cm.
So ignore the building, pretend that wasn't there.
Okay.
If I was to copy this, just move it out there.
This is a drawing sheet for an A4 piece of paper and it's drawn actual size.
Again, everything in AutoCAD is drawn actual size.
So our paper frame is actual size in paper space.
Our model is actual size.
In model space, this is 20,000mm.
This is 260mm.
Okay, so we're both drawing actual size in the relative space.
So how then do we show our model in this piece of paper?
For this, we use something called viewpoint.
And this is where people get people get a bit confused about what's happening.
I want you to imagine you're looking out of your window.
So if you sat near a window, look out that window now.
And I'm presuming somewhere outside of that window you can see a building and that building is probably
many meters tall.
Okay.
But your window frame might only be one meter tall.
Yet you can see maybe you can see the whole outline of that building.
So you might be able to see a 20 meter high building and see the whole outline of that for a window
frame.
But it's only one meter tall.
How does that work?
Well, the building's far away.
So you're you've zoomed out, if you like.
The building is set way back.
So through your one meter square window, you can see a 20 meter building.
If you remember that, that's all you need to know.
That is how a view port works.
Okay, so what I'm going to do in this frame, I'm going to insert a view port.
And a view port is a window.
It's a window from paper space to model space.
Okay.
And where we add that window, because we're in the layout tab, we will have this available to us here.
Layout.
Okay.
And under that we have layout viewports.
There are different ones.
Just go for rectangular.
Now just click on where it says rectangular.
Okay.
And what it's going to do now, it's just like drawing a rectangle, one corner.
Another corner and you should now see your building layout.
Okay.
This rectangle with triangle we've just drawn.
We can move that.
We can do things with it.
Maybe we'll put it over here.
We can use grips.
We can change the size of it.
But this is a window.
This is a window looking through from paper space to model space.
And if we double click it, we can go into the window.
So now we look.
Now we're kind of controlling the view in this window if you use your normal view tool, so your middle
wheel, you can zoom in and out, you can pan.
Okay, You'll see that changes in size.
Now we're not.
Now it's important to remember we're not changing the size of this model.
We're not affecting this model in any way.
All we're doing is adjusting the view.
So the example we used of looking through your window and seeing a building, if that building was right
up to you, you'd probably see that, okay, if that building was a mile away, it might look like that.
And that's all we're doing here.
So we're setting it to how we want to see if if we just wanted to make sure we saw the whole thing.
We can use a double click zoom extents.
Okay.
And we've got the building in our window.
So now we can see the whole building.
And if we double click out of here, what we could do, we could kind of use a move command with a base
point.
We can move that in here now and we've got that building layout.
So we have.
A paper space drawing frame which is drawn to actual size.
We have.
A building which is still actual size.
We haven't altered it at all and we have a window from one to the other where we've set the view so
that we can see it.
Okay.
And.
Well, what's important to remember, if you were to print this out and you were to try and use it,
nobody would kind of know what scale this is.
We tend to use scales, so different drawings.
If we just zoomed extents in this window and you add all sorts of different drawings, but none of them
would look the same.
They'd all be to different sizes.
So you tend to use standard scales.
I don't want to get too much into engineering, but scales would be something like 1 to 100.
So 1 to 100, for instance, would mean that 100m in model space would equal one meter in paper space.
That's how a scale works.
So when you say 1 to 100, it just it's a ratio and we can do that easily in CAD, so we can double
click in our window.
And instead of using the Zoom command, if we look down here, we have the standard scales is kind of
set up.
So if we wanted to show his actual size, that would be 1 to 1.
And if I just pan it a bit so we can actually do it on something.
So if I set this at 1 to 1 that is actual size.
So we only get a bit of that wall.
I think it's 100 millimeter wall.
That's how it's going to look at actual size on, on a piece of A4 paper.
But we can change that.
Maybe we want, let's say 1 to 10, that's still way too big.
Okay.
So it's going to be something more like 1 to 100.
1 to 100 I'd say is perfect.
So that is to an official actual scale of 1 to 100.
Okay.
And we can use that.