From Rectangular to Polygonal? No Problem!

Maybe it's just me, but is seems that when your working on drawings that contain multiple layouts, using polygonal viewports increases the regen time on the drawing. Okay, so there's a lot of things that increase regen time, especially if you're using Civil 3D, but I'm only addressing one in particular. (For a more detailed list with recommendations, read Dana's post on civil 3d.com)

Up until last week, I would always create my viewports as rectangular then add a mask or wipeout, if necessary, to place my north arrow and barscale. This method works for objects in paperspace, but if I needed to overlay another viewport, that wasn't the answer. In that case, I had to recreate the viewport, move the new one so that it overlayed the original one exactly (move endpoint to endpoint), then modify the viewport to match the border of the sheet as required.

Well, last week I was shown a new command that really made the process much easier and I've decided to share it with you. The command is vpclip. With this command, you can "convert" a rectangular viewport to a polygonal viewport in seconds. Here's how it works:

1. While in the layout tab to be modified, begin by entering vpclip at the command prompt and pressing enter.
2. The command prompt will request that you "Select viewport to clip:". Left click on the viewport that you want modified. NOTE: you must have the layer containing the viewport ON and THAWED to select the viewport.
3. Next you'll be prompted to "Select clipping object or [Polygonal] :"
4. If you have already created an object for the new viewport boundary, just left click the object to select it. The viewport boundary will update immediately.
5. If you want to create the boundary "on-the-fly", just press enter to select Polygonal, then left click each PI of the new boundary. If you forget to "Close" at the end, don't worry, the software will do it for you.

Don't forget that you can use a circle for the viewport boundary as well. Just create the circle in paperspace, then select it as your new "clipping object" when prompted.

Now you can create all your viewports as rectangles, then convert them only when necessary. Hopefully this will help keep your regen time a bit shorter in the future.

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