This was actually painless and very useful. It didn't require the pushing of any buttons or moving the mouse repeatedly to pan. While you're working along, if you happen to move the cursor to within a prescribed distance from the edge of the current view AutoCAD would pan over a set amount. I think the defaults were 1 inch from the edge and pan 1/2 of the screen dimension. Once in awhile I'd forget to disable it, and pan when I didn't want to, but it was an easy toggle to turn it on and off. You might be surprised how much difference it would make when you're drawing walls, polylines, dimension strings, etc. I'm sure if I can't get a hold of it I'll just write a program for it, but I don't usually get much time to program these days. Gotta stay "billable". Productive is a relative term when you have to justify every minute. Of course, posting on here takes time too. I better get back to work!
P.S. I agree with you about the aerial view. I can't afford the screen space.