Understand the Layout Process

When you use a named layout to prepare your drawing for output, you follow a series of steps in a process.

You design the subject of your drawing in model space and prepare it for output on a named layout in paper space. A drawing always has at least one named layout.

Before you can use a layout, it must be initialized. A layout does not contain any page setup information before it is initialized. Once initialized, layouts can be drawn upon and output.

Process Summary

When you prepare a layout, you typically step through the following process:

• Create a model of your subject in model space.
• Initialize a named layout.
• Specify layout page settings such as output device, paper size, drawing area, output scale, and drawing orientation.
• Insert a title block into the layout (unless you have started with a drawing template that already has a title block).
• Create a new layer to be used for layout viewports.
• Create layout viewports and position them on the layout.
• Set the orientation, scale, and layer visibility of the view in each layout viewport.
• Add dimensions and annotate in the layout as needed.
• Turn off the layer containing the layout viewports.
• Output your layout.

You can also use annotative objects if you want to annotate your drawing in model space and scale the annotations automatically. For information about using annotative objects and scaling annotations automatically.