There's something I'm not understanding about perspective views and zooming

Hey guys, got a question about the above.

Say I have a pretty big drawing going on of an entire floor of a commercial space, plus extra space for elevation blocks and whatnot. I'm pretty inefficient about my drawing space usage, because I like to space things out enough to be understandable, so the whole thing is several miles square... but who cares, right? I should be able to do anything I want in any area of the drawing file, period.

...or so I naively believe at this point in time.

My issue comes when I try to create perspective views of specific rooms or objects. Essentially, getting the correct orientation and, most importantly, the correct zoom on specific objects is impossible when your drawing is that big. Setting ZOOMFACTOR to 3 doesn't even come close: each 'click' of the mouse wheel lurches the view forward or backward 50 feet. It is literally impossible to orient the camera to where I need it.

Google doesn't provide a whole lot about this, but it seems this has to do with the "viewing volume," which I kind of understand. ZOOMFACTOR will scale with the amount of space you're using. I have no freaking idea WHY anybody would ever want that ("You know what I really need? I need my mouse wheel zoom step to change depending on how many objects are in my drawing and where they're located. In fact I intend on locating a new object at a specific location just to get my ZOOMFACTOR to where I want it..."), but, whatever.

I understand there are computing nuances going on here, but this all brings me back to the fundamentals of my question. There must be some of you guys with big-ass drawings from which you need to extract specific perspective views, so, how do you do it? How do you have objects several miles apart, and still accurately manage your camera?

I have been advised in the past to "completely forget DVIEW exists," so I'm hoping the solution doesn't lie there...

Thanks again in advance, and thanks in general for you guys who take the time to answer my dumb / weird questions!

Is this drawing in 3D or 2D? I don't like to have that much stuff in one drawing but to your question... If you aren't using named views you should start there, then you can quickly bounce around the various parts of the drawing. Use view controls in the upper left to change to ISO views, etc.

Also, if you're talking about a 3D model, which I assume you are since you're talking about perspective views, you should set up actual cameras for each room or each view so you can go back to them at any time as necessary.

so the whole thing is several miles square... but who cares, right? I should be able to do anything I want in any area of the drawing file, period.

Although AutoCAD can be very accurate. There are know issues with objects being far from (0,0,0), known and repeatable. I have no idea if it will help with your zoom issue but inaccuracies will happen.

I second Cad64's recommendation to use AutoCAD's camera feature if you are not already doing so. Just do a Help on camera. Note, the camera panel may not display by default in the Render tab. Right-click in a blank ribbon area to get to the "Show Panels" option then check Camera. Work with at least two viewports, a Top parallel projection view and a camera viewport. The camera viewport will not dynamically update as you move the camera in the top view. You will need to reselect the camera viewport, click Camera in the viewport label and then click Custom Model Views, and then the name of the camera. Geometry added or moved in a scene will dynamically display in a camera viewport.

Once you have added a camera you can you can drag it to relocate it or go to its properties panel to change the camera and target height and other camera parameters like lens and field of view.

~Lee

Why not just use zoom C which is zoom at a center point for a given scale, this will stop the mouse problem zooming to fast. Then create a view so you can jump to it.

Hey guys, thanks again.

The answer to my problem is the CAMERA command, which someone had advised me ignore as well, saying "it's only used for rendering." That's... not how I would describe it. I would describe CAMERA as a way to set up manageable perspective views that can be easily applied to a viewport, which is exactly what I had been looking for. Sometimes you just have to go to the ends of the earth just to find something you've been ignoring all along...

I will say that it's a little finicky, and trying to position my camera has led to some rare crashes, but once I got the hang of it I feel this is exactly the route I should be taking. Pretty incredible how I've been wrangling perspective views for several months now without using CAMERA.

Anyway, thanks again! I really appreciate it.