Zooming

Zoom controls the visual scale of a drawing. It does not affect the physical size of objects as set by the layer scale. Like a magnifying glass, zoom controls how close or far away objects appear on the screen. Zoom in to get a close-up view of a detail, and zoom out to get a broader view of the whole drawing.

During a zoom operation, the drawing continues to display normally if possible. A complex drawing may not display in full detail during a zoom operation, but as soon as the zoom is complete, the drawing displays normally. When in an uncropped perspective projection, zooming moves the viewpoint in the model while the line of sight remains centered in the window; see Projection.

The Vectorworks program includes zoom functionality in several areas:

The mouse wheel

The View bar

The Zoom tool on the Basic palette (see The Zoom tool)

Zooming with the mouse wheel

On a wheel-mouse, roll the mouse wheel forward to magnify the drawing (the Zoom tool on the Basic palette need not be selected). Roll the mouse wheel backward to zoom out from the drawing. Zooming with the mouse wheel when the cursor is located over the Onscreen View Control cube uses the center of the view pane as the zoom origin, rather than the cursor position.

The mouse wheel behavior is controlled by the Mouse wheel zooms setting in the Edit pane of the Vectorworks Preferences dialog box. If the wheel is set to scroll by default, you must press the Ctrl (Windows) or Option (Mac) key while you roll in order to zoom. See Vectorworks preferences: Edit pane for details.

This feature will not work properly if standard scrolling is disabled in the mouse setup. For example, if the mouse's scrolling size is set to "none," mouse zooming in the Vectorworks program is disabled. (The specific settings required for this feature depend on the type of mouse being used.)

Zooming from the View bar

From the View bar, enter a specific zoom percentage, or select a percentage from the list.

Pull the list down to resize the list

If objects are currently selected, the zoom is centered on those objects.

The Zoom tool

 

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