How to Create Paper Space Viewports in BricsCAD
Quick answer: MVIEW and VPORTS create one or more viewports in a layout tab. A new viewport shows every entity on whichever layers are currently visible in model space. It’s worth using a dedicated layer for viewport outlines, with its Do Not Plot property set, if you don’t want those outlines to print.
Note: Octave’s own summary line for this page refers to “the MVIEW and VPORT commands” (without an S), but every other reference on this same page, including its own Related Commands list, uses VPORTS. That looks like a typo rather than a genuinely separate command.
Creating an Array of Viewports
MVSETUP (“multiple viewports setup”) creates several paper space viewports at once, then aligns, rotates, and scales them for you.
Viewport Properties
Select a viewport to see its properties in the Properties panel, then click a property’s settings field to change it.
| Property | What it controls |
|---|---|
| Center | The XYZ coordinates of the viewport’s centre point, relative to the bottom-left corner of the layout’s printable area |
| Height | The viewport’s height, in drawing units |
| Width | The viewport’s width, in drawing units |
| On | Whether the viewport’s content displays. Also accessible from the right-click context menu: select the viewport, right-click, expand Display Viewport Objects, and choose Yes or No |
| Clipped | Whether the viewport is clipped |
| Display locked | Locks the viewport’s content scaling to preserve its scale factor. The VPLOCK field in the Status Bar shows this status for the selected viewport(s); click it to toggle |
| Scale | Several related settings: Annotation scale (editing it also sets Standard scale automatically; if ANNOALLVISIBLE is off, annotative entities that don’t support the current scale won’t display), Standard scale (matches Annotation scale by default but can be adjusted, and reads “Custom” if the Custom scale value isn’t in the drawing’s scale list), and Custom scale (the viewport’s actual scale factor, letting you use one not in the drawing’s scale list). SCALELISTEDIT edits the available scales in the current drawing |
| UCS per viewport | If set to Yes, lets you define a UCS specific to this viewport |
| Visual Style | Sets the viewport’s visual style; only applies to 3D models |
| Shade Plot | Adjusts the plotted shading from the visual style; defaults to “As Displayed” |
| Default Lighting | Switches off the model’s own lights in favour of default lighting |
Frequently Asked Questions
What layers show up in a newly created viewport? Every entity on whichever layers are currently visible in model space at the time you create it.
How do I stop viewport outlines from printing? Put them on a dedicated layer, and set that layer’s Do Not Plot property.
How do I quickly create several viewports at once, already aligned and scaled? Run MVSETUP, it creates multiple paper space viewports and handles aligning, rotating, and scaling them.
What’s the difference between Annotation scale and Custom scale? Annotation scale drives which annotative entities display and automatically updates the Standard scale. Custom scale is for setting the viewport’s actual scale factor to something not already in the drawing’s scale list.