QCad User Reference Manual

# 11. Viewing

The view menu and toolbar offer some tools to adjust the current viewport of the drawing. All these tools have no effect on the geometry of the entities of the drawing. They only change the zoom factor and the visible area (viewport).

Viewing tools are probably the most often used functions in a CAD system. They can be easily accessed from the viewing toolbar (Figure 12). For the ones you use most, it is worth remembering and using the hotkeys. For example to show the whole drawing, simply press `ZA`. If the command line has the keyboard focus, you need to press the Escape key to release the focus first.

Figure 12: The viewing toolbar.

## 11.1. Scrolling

Use the two scrollbars at the right and the bottom of the drawing window to scroll around in a drawing. If you have a wheel mouse, you can also use the wheel to scroll up and down (hold down the Ctrl key) or left and right (hold down the Shift key).
If your mouse has three mouse buttons, the middle mouse button can be used to change the current view by dragging the drawing around (panning).

## 11.2. Toggle Grid

Toolbar:

Menu:

    View - Grid

Description:

Toggles the grid visibility of the current drawing.

## 11.3. Toggle Draft Mode

Toolbar:

Menu:

    View - Draft

Description:

Toggles the draft mode of the current drawing. In draft mode, all lines are shown with a width of 1 pixel. Hatches are not shown and large texts are only shown as bounding rectangles. Use the draft mode if your drawing becomes very large and it takes long to redraw it.

## 11.4. Redrawing

Toolbar:

Menu:

    View - Redraw

Hotkey:

    zr, rg

Command:

    regen

Description:

Redraws the current drawing. After moving or deleting a lot of entities the drawing can look incomplete or 'fuzzy'. With this function you can regenerate the graphic view.

## 11.5. Zooming In / Out

Toolbar:

Menu:

    View - Zoom in

    View - Zoom out

Hotkey:

    + / -

    zi / zo

Description:

This tool increases / decreases the current viewing factor by 1.5. The same effect can also be achieved by turning the mouse wheel (Figure 13).

Figure 13: Use the mouse wheel to zoom in / out quickly.

## 11.6. Auto Zoom

Toolbar:

Menu:

    View - Auto Zoom

Hotkey:

    za

Command:

    zoomauto

Description:

Scales the drawing view so that all entities that are on visible layers fit on the screen.

## 11.7. Previous View

Toolbar:

Menu:

    View - Previous View

Hotkey:

    zv

Command:

    zoomprevious

Description:

Shows the last used view. Use this to switch back to the previous view after an autozoom or after zooming in with the window zoom.

## 11.8. Window Zoom

Toolbar:

Menu:

    View - Window Zoom

Hotkey:

    zw

Command:

    zoomwindow

Description:

This tool offers a quick way to view a certain area of the drawing.

Procedure:

1. Specify the first corner of the area you want to view. Click the left mouse button at that corner and keep it down.
2. Drag the mouse to the second corner of the area.
3. Let go of the mouse button at the second corner.

Note: Alternatively you can specify the first and the second corner each with a single mouse click instead of dragging the mouse around with the mouse button pressed.

## 11.9. Panning

Toolbar:

Menu:

    View - Pan Zoom

Hotkey:

    zp

Command:

    zoompan

Description:

Panning means moving around in the drawing. The quickest way to do so is using the middle mouse button and move the view similar like you would move a paper around: press the middle mouse button and hold it while moving the drawing around. If your mouse does not have a middle mouse button you can activate this tool instead and then do the same with the left mouse button. Click the right mouse button when you are done.