Auto-Pan?

[cadman009]

Years ago I used an Auto-Pan feature in AutoCAD. It might have been an Auto-Architect command. With the command enabled AutoCAD would automatically pan when the cursor was a prescribed distance from the edge of the screen. It was a great tool for zooming in close and entering walls, contours, dimension strings, etc. Does anybody here know if that command or a customization that would approximate it exists?

[Tom Smith]

How did it differ from a transparent CTRL+wheel pan, which does the same thing when you point near the screen edge?

I also recall some little navigation things like that in ancient add-ons, but don't miss any of them since mbutton panning came along -- none of them had as slick and easy an interface.

For another flash from the past, how about the "bird's eye" viewers that were considered so awesome back when regens were painfully slow? We got one with a video driver, but eventually concluded that the screen space it ate up wasn't worth its coolness. About the time the novelty wore off, Acad belatedly duplicated it with DSVIEWER, but I don't know a single person who uses that.

[cadman009]

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.

[Tom Smith]

Must have been in an add-on as I don't recall that in any version of vanilla Acad.

At one time I would have said, you definitely can't do anything like that with the customizations tools provided. Maybe now it's somehow possible with reactors, who knows.

[M_Hensley]

I remember this panning feature. It came with the RasterX graphics card package for AutoCAD R12.

[kieren.aubrey]

Remember reading something sometime back on Cadalyst and managed to find this:

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Cadalyst.com
Tips & Tools Weekly (Vol. 11, No. 36)
Automatic Pan
Danny Comsa writes in with this tip. When using the Pan command and starting it with either P or the mouse button, you must keep resetting the pan pick point when it gets to the edge of the screen so you can see what is off the screen. Comsa suggests pressing the CTRL key with the Pan command. This forces the Pan to move automatically in the direction you move the mouse -- there are eight indicators to help you see the directions picked, he says. The faster you initially move the mouse, the faster the auto-pan works.

NOTES FROM CADALYST TIP PATROL: Patrollers agree that this is a good tip. In addition, one adds that you can get the same result by holding down CTRL and holding down the middle wheel mouse button. Of course, if you want the classic Pan command, type –P and press Enter. You are prompted to specify a base point of displacement followed by specifying a second point. With Ortho on or off, you can type in the distance as you would with the Copy or Move command.
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HOLLY