Why Use Paper Space?

I'm not saying one way is wrong and one way is right either.

I accept that that is what you are saying, and I am saying the same. What annoys me is the "it MUST be done this way" approach of some people. There are many reasons for continuing the same old way and not are all because of age. We have considered paperspace (in fact one group of projects has been done that way) but for our work there is no great advantage and a large overhead in converting many of the routines we use on a daily basis.

 

I have to admit that I have never looked at sheet set manager. I assume this helps with printed output? If so, the vast majority of all our prints are produced as extents "scale to fit" on an A3 printer utilising a single .ctb file. For single prints press the icon on the menu bar (one of the few icons I have) and if you need a batch of plots we have a script generator (largly unchanged in 15 years) that can be working inside a minute or two. I doubt if utilising SSM would speed up that process.

 

To reiterate,I am not saying our way is right but it is a viable method. All the examples given are good reasons for that poster to use that method but I have yet to see a good reason for us to change, and a blanket "its wrong" is not a good reason.

Edited September 22, 2010 by dbroada

This comes back to the age-old AutoCAD not one size fits all way of working.

Generally, if the workflow of only using modelspace is more efficient than utilising paperspace, then you would be an idiot to change your workflow just because someone on the internet says so.

Personally, I wouldn't be without paperspace; but I can see value in why some people don't

I consider those posts which say "you HAVE to do it my way" as a tease, and you have to have a laugh.

 

"You cannot be serious"

All "drawing" should be done in model space, I think we can all agree on that. Personally, I prefer paper space for the reasons that have already mentioned: One title block fits all, saves tons of time when creating sheets and plotting, multiple scales on one sheet without ever using a SCALE command, Sheet Set Manager is a wonderful utility that only works with paperspace sheets, you can mask out part of the drawing using viewports very easily, multiple views (in 3D) on one sheet, layer state per sheet so you don't have to turn on/off layers for each different plot, text in paperspace is always the right scale, ETC. The list goes on.

 

The only real downfalls with paperspace are that it can take a little longer to set up, there is a (slight) learning curve if you're new to using paperspace, drawing files with tons of sheets can bog down your computer, I'm sure that there are a few more.

 

Try it, you'll like it. After a few weeks of using paperspace for your title blocks, you'll never look back.

Good postings

 

I am somewhat new to autocad 2010 but have learned a tremendous amount about this issue in the past year. First, I never new what a viewport was, lol. The way I roll I use paperspace for my border, title block, and any other entity on the drawing where it has nothing to do with my drawing. Everything else I do in model space. I am not really sure when the whole viewport thing came out on autocad but it is great. I use three different scales sometimes for the same detail to show different areas of things. However, my only problem and maybe someone can help with this is my dimensioning and leaders. Currently, I plan out my drawings ahead of time and make different texts, dimensions and leaders for each scale that I am going to use so they are the same in each viewport. I know there is the annotative thing but it never really works for me for some reason which is probably cause i dont understand it. However, it is very easy to make my font 1' in 1/8"-1' scale and 2' in 1/16-1' scale. Doing it this way actually makes me more involved in my drawing cause you always have to be aware of what is going on whcih I kinda like but it would be nice to switch viewports and my leaders and dimensions be the same sizes.

bjenk8100:

 

Re: Text and Dimensions.

 

You're putting these in model space then right? When you finally print the drawing out, what height is your text and dimensions? Just curious.

it would be nice to switch viewports and my leaders and dimensions be the same sizes.

 

This is exactly what annotative text is for. It can be confusing, it can slow your system down a lot, and it usually causes overlapping of entities so you need to move your text around most of the time. I don't really use annotative text for these reasons

 

My solution, which is probably pretty close to what you're doing, is to create a layer for each viewport, and a style for each scale.

 

For example, layer "DIM-8" and "DIM-16" for your 1/8th scale dimensions and your 1/16th dimensions, and then create Dimstyles that will correspond to the viewport scales.

 

Then, you can dimension everything in model space using the particular style/layer for that viewport, and just turn off that layer in all of the other viewports.

 

Does that make sense?

ReMark, i do evertything in model space except border and title block. I like my text to plot at 1/4". When I annotate in a specific viewport lets say 1/8"-1' I want my font to be 1/4" in real life so I make a text style at 2' that way it will print at 1/4.

I guess this is the way to do it. Annotative gets really confusing.

The method you are using was popular before the introduction of Annotative Scaling. If you want to avoid AS then put all your dimensions and text in your layout. Just make sure you check off Associative in your Dimstyle that way if you change the size of something the dimension will reflect the change as well.

yea i have tried that as well. my problem was that I like to rearrange different objects onto different areas and if your drawing is in MS and dims in PS you cant move both together.

Classic case of OIE.

 

Then I suggest you stop what you are doing and really learn Annotative Scaling or you will always be forced to deal with multiple text and dimension styles.

 

I avoid your problem by making dimensioning my last step. I arrange, rearrange, even change scales of viewports BEFORE I dimension. Planning ahead really does have its advantages. That's not to say that the boss won't come in 1 minute before you're ready to plot and make a major change to the design. Those things can hardly be planned in advance.

Can't you eliminate messing around with scales entirely just by setting your dimension text height to whatever you want it to print at, and letting AutoCAD automatically scale your MS dimensions according to the viewport scale. (rhetorical of course, since that's how I've been doing it for years.)

Why Use Paper Space?

 

The engineering firm I worked for (before the recession) had major corporations as clients and they all used microcrap (errr Microstation).

When things starting going downhill they had to start taking whatever work they could get.

A lot of small companies use AutoCAD (because of the cost I suppose).

For the first big AutoCAD job they had to bring in a road shopper with experience. He had worked where sheet sets, layouts and paper space, etc. was normal so that's how he did the job. Problem was, when the files were sent to the client, they wanted them in Model Space.

That's when I came in and reworked the drawings. It turned out that nearly all the clients that use AutoCAD prefer Model Space.

So, the bottom line should be "What does the client want?

That's my two cents worth.

Not all clients ask for the actual drawing files.

Why Use Paper Space?

 

The engineering firm I worked for (before the recession) had major corporations as clients and they all used microcrap (errr Microstation).

When things starting going downhill they had to start taking whatever work they could get.

A lot of small companies use AutoCAD (because of the cost I suppose).

For the first big AutoCAD job they had to bring in a road shopper with experience. He had worked where sheet sets, layouts and paper space, etc. was normal so that's how he did the job. Problem was, when the files were sent to the client, they wanted them in Model Space.

That's when I came in and reworked the drawings. It turned out that nearly all the clients that use AutoCAD prefer Model Space.

So, the bottom line should be "What does the client want?

That's my two cents worth.

Guess he didn't know about the CHSPACE command. Problem solved.

My clients are state-of-art and prefer paper space.

It turned out that nearly all the clients that use AutoCAD prefer Model Space.

So, the bottom line should be "What does the client want?

That's my two cents worth.

It turns out that the client always wants it a certain way, and that each client is different. Then they realize that's not really what they wanted, so they ask you to fix it and redo it the way you were originally going to do it, had it been up to you.

 

CHSPACE

Man oh man, the day I found out about the CHSPACE was one of the happiest days of my life. :-D I was at a toss-up between doing dimensions in the paperspace, or doing them in modelspace. Dimensioning in paperspace always seems easier to me because you can maintain your frame of reference (so you know everything is the right scale, orientation, etc) with the title block. However, I think the dimensions are best kept in model space, especially for the surveys and site plans I work on, which end up moving around a lot in the preliminary stages, and it's nice to be able to move the dimensions with the rest of the model. So now, I usually end up doing the dimensions in paperspace to make sure they were the right style and size, then just moving them into model space once I get everything the way I want it. Problem solved.

I like my dimensions in MS as well. For my line of work, it is critical to NOT use PS for dimensioning.

Reading through these posts, I suppose there are some scenarios where PS is not a necessity (and could even be a determent). So it depends on your type of drawing, if it's a NTS diagram only ... you're probably not worrying about any scaling and can draw everything simply to make fit inside the TB. Just one major no-no ... if your TB is in MS, please, please, pleeeeeaaaaase place it on a layer of its own

 

In my line (mostly Arch) I've never come across a situation where PS is bad. I've started with ACad R9 in the late 80's - at that time there was only MS. I loved the PS idea as soon as it came out, since I never needed to convert scales when having blown-up details. And having multiple layout tabs makes life even easier (had to use xreffing just for this in R14). And then when SSM came out it made PS an even more usable idea, it makes it incredibly easy to modify values in the TB without even opening that DWG file, have things like callout tags automatically reference the correct drawing number, etc.

 

Given all the scaling & layer settings can be simulated in MS if you split everything into xrefs, I think that's a whole lot more complex than multiple viewports and / or multiple tabs. Not to mention if you also use annotative scaling it's near impossible to work directly on MS only - you need PS to make AS come to its full. In MS you also need to have several different dim styles (and such) per scale, as well as per scaled-scale (e.g. say the entire DWG is a 1:100 you'd have a main dim style with its DimScale=100.0. What to do when you then have a blown up detail at 1:10? You need a dim style with its DimLFac=0.1), see how this could start to become really complex? With PS you'd need one dimstyle, especially if you dim on top of or through PS - but these days with AnnoScales you can even dim in MS with only one dimstyle. The same idea applies to stuff like text styles, tables, multileaders, etc.

If the work is easy to be good both ways.

If you have to work with very complex drawing the use of paper space is required, in this case the use of paper space greatly reduces the work time.