CADDManager on May 16th, 2005

I spoke recently with a user who was quizzing me on what exactly Paper Space Layouts do. I was mildly shocked that he had no understanding about using PS and Layout tabs. He was a long time ACAD 14 user and had also used ACAD 2002 for some time.

Are there really folks out there that are not using PS Layouts? YES and there may be quite a few. I am always shocked to see the class offerings at AU and they include Lynn Allen’s “Lost in Paper Space”. This last year it was presented by Daniel Abbott of Southern Maine Community College. How long has Paper Space been around now? Almost 10 years.

Lynn’s articles include her most popular Circles & Lines columns, “Lost in Paper Space (Part 1),” (September 1996, pp. 71-74) and “Lost in Paper Space (The Sequel),” (October 1996, pp. 69-74).

Let me think… If MS/PS has taken 10 years for the stragglers to embrace, how long for things like Fields, or Dynamic Blocks. Oh, how it pains me to see that the level of the slowest adopter is so slow. Are we not a tech planet? Is this not the new millennium? Please share your stories of tech stragglers – make a comment.

“For those that need a refresher on Paper Space”.

11 Responses to “Still trapped in Model Space?”

  1. As a college instructor who has used AutoCAD since r2.62 (circa 1984) and taught it since r9, I can tell you the answer to PaperSpace’s slow adoption – it still doesn’t work well, and is not intuitive. I haven’t had the oportunity to try r2006, but as of r2005 dimensions still are not truely “transdimensional”, i.e. if you pan within a viewport on a Layout, dimensions in PaperSpace remain associative, but will not shift to mate with their geometry until the drawing is exited then re-opened, or until a Dimension Update is done (which can mess up dimension with overrides). Until ture 2D parametrics and a better SOLVIEW-SOLDRAW for 3D models are incorporated, AutoCAD Layouts will continue to be difficult to use for anything beyond the complexity of tutorial parts in an introductory drafting class. Maybe Layout viewports could have properties for default dimension layer and plot scale settings that control the DIMSCALE variable when that viewport is selected.

  2. As a CAD and GIS Professional, I can tell you that paperspace is not supported by GIS at this time, thereby making it almost impossible to view or convert paperspace layouts into the GIS.

  3. To answer your questions, no we are not a tech planet and yes we are in the new milenium. This does not mean that grandma can use Linux and students can understand professionals. I lay somewhere in between loathing user-friendly and trying to grasp the concept of a tech-based world. As someone who just learned AutoCAd and is treading lightly on unfamiliar ground I was totally dumbfounded when the concept of MS and PS came into play. The first concept I had was…..sooooo paper space lets me zoom in…by making a border around my drawing…. Obviously I have progressed from that first thought and see the vital and necassary use of paper space and the undoubted need for the use of both layouts, but just because you write the words, doesn’t mean it’s always in the same language. I’m posative that David Frey knows CAD like the back of his hand, but he may not be able to speak newbie language.

    Stumbling through a techie world when you’re not a techie, sort of makes you feel like an alien at times, but it is definately far from a tech planet we are on. Take heed if you’re planning on writing an instuctional book or a lecture.

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  6. As a ten year user of AutoCAD I love PS/MS and teach it to all my new hires. Once they get the analogy of the monitor is the “looking glass” (paper space) and the “real world” (model space) is behind it then everything is soooo much easier. And of course all dimensions should go in MS and all layouts MUST have a scale bar.

  7. WOW!! The last comment on this post was over a year and a half ago (give or take.) I came across this post through a Google search for Paper Space in AutoCAD. I am about to conduct a training session for the CAD users in my office about Paper Space. We have made much progress in the use of paper space in the past year, but we still have users that are having difficulty. The biggest complaint that i receive is the ever popular and intuitive “I don’t like it.”

    I hate that complaint. I just don’t like it, that’s all. Anyway, this post made in May 2005 is still valid today, November 2007!!! Paper space has been around since release 11, and yet it is a concept alien to many users. Paper space is not the only problem spot in CAD. I have trouble getting users to xref files properly!!! How can you xref wrong? Trust me, it can be done.

    We will see how this training session goes today. Hopefully i will be able to enlighten some and pull them from the the depths of cad despair and ignorance!!

  8. I have been trying to teach myself AutoCAD for one and a half year, trying to grasp the basic concept of it.

    60 percent of my time is spent on understanding the concept of model and paper space. Yet, I still don’t understand it.

  9. PS in Autocad was very ill-conceived and designed. I have heard a thousand different explanations of what it is and how it works. The fact that there are so many different explanations is testimony to the fact that it was poorly designed and implemented by Autodesk.

    It should be simple. It should be intuitive. It should need little or no explanations.

  10. I don’t understand how you cannot understand MS/PS. Its easy and makes complete sense. MS is where you draw, to scale. PS is where your title block is located and where you set the certain scale for that drawings you made in MS. Its simple

  11. I need Paper Space for Dummies. I have been using autocad for 15 years and never used paper space.
    I need to learn paper space but where?

    thanks

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