Problems with zoom extents/possible hidden objects

[Anonymous]

When trying to print my drawing selecting Extents, center the plot in the print window, the drawing will print as if shifted off to one side.  I've also noticed that when I use zoom extents in paperspace, the drawing gets shifted off to one side, as if there's something there that I can't see.  I've tried selecting that entire area to see what's there, but there's nothing there for me to erase.  I've also tried using the Erase command to erase everything outside my drawing area, but nothing happens there either.  This makes it very annoying when it comes to printing the drawing, as I have to tip-toe around certain printing methods to make sure it doesn't shift the drawing over.  What am I missing?  I've tried thawing/turning on all layers to see if there is something hidden there.

The drawing is just a title block that contains text, and has a viewport showing an xref'd drawing.

Any help is appreciated.

[Kent1Cooper]

Welcome to these Forums!

Better solution:  Use drawing LIMITS and Plot to them, rather than to the Extents.  Then you can "park" stuff outside the Limits if you want [I do this all the time -- notes to myself, optional partial drawn stuff I'm not sure I want to get rid of yet, etc.], or you can have those impossible-to-find stray elements, with no effect on Plot results.  And you can [see the Subject line] Zoom to the Limits, too, leaving extraneous out-there stuff just out there without any influence, for instance in a command macro in a menu item somewhere:

'ZOOM (getvar 'limmin) (getvar 'limmax)

or in a defined command:

(defun C:ZL (); Zoom Limits
  (command "_.zoom" (getvar 'limmin) (getvar 'limmax))
  (princ)
)

[Anonymous]

Older Autocad versions had Plot to Limits choise, but the last few versions don't have that choise, they only have "Display", "extents", "Layout", "View" and "Windows", no "Limits"

[Kent1Cooper]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Older Autocad versions had Plot to Limits choise, but the last few versions don't have that choise, they only have "Display", "extents", "Layout", "View" and "Windows", no "Limits"

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I don't have a newer version where I am at the moment, but Help for the PLOT dialog box in both 2015 and 2016 includes this:

Layout/Limits

When plotting a layout, plots everything within the printable area of the specified paper size, with the origin calculated from 0,0 in the layout.

When plotting from the Model tab, plots the entire drawing area that is defined by the grid limits. If the current viewport does not display a plan view, this option has the same effect as the Extents option.

[Anonymous]

If you are plotting a 22x34 drawing to a 11x17 printer you can not Plot "Fit to Paper" if you set to Plot to Layout, and if you set the scale to 1:2 it chops the border. You can Plot to Layout if you are Plotting to a large format Plotter and it will Plot the whole drawing.

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

The second hint in the page https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/autocad/troubleshooting/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/Object...:

"Select all in the drawing and then hold the shift key down while drawing a window selection around desired geometry. Hit the delete key to remove the extraneous elements, leaving only what you just deselected."

 has solved the problem for me.

[jggerth]

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@Anonymous wrote:

If you are plotting a 22x34 drawing to a 11x17 printer you can not Plot "Fit to Paper" if you set to Plot to Layout, and if you set the scale to 1:2 it chops the border. You can Plot to Layout if you are Plotting to a large format Plotter and it will Plot the whole drawing.

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@Plotting full size AnsiD to AnsiB 11x17?  This is easy enough to resolve, and I do it constantly.  Define a Named Page Setup for the tabloid printer and your border, and set the X&Y offset as needed.  Using an ACOE standard D-size border inserted in Paperspace @ 0,0, and plotting by layout (with a plot scale of 1:2)  to an HP M855 printer, I use an X offset of  -0.15 and a y offset of -0.22 with plot origin set to printable area.

Completely repeatable, totally reliable.  When chinging printers, or using a different border, those values may need to change, but that's the beauty of using Named Page Setups.  Combined with Sheet Set Manager and Publishing, what was tricky is now trivially easy.

[Anonymous]

i had problems with my drawing when i clicked the Zoom Extents tool -- AutoCAD was detecting something i could not see nor select in the -Y region showing that "something was there" which i could not select like a football field's worth of space in the -Y area,, tried many ways to select,, what may have cured my problem was:

i switched from Realistic View Style to 2D Wireframe View Style and i clicked the Zoom Extents tool and i no longer had the problem

using the Select All / press Shift Key + Window Select as described in the below page did not work for me:
https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/autocad/troubleshooting/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/Object...

i also Window Selected the relevant parts of my drawing, not whatever it was in the extreme -Y section of the drawing, and Copied and Pasted into a new drawing and i did not have the same View Extents problem any longer in the new drawing...

regardless: i want to thank Autodesk deeply for the software,

shootingrubberbandsatthestars

[jerry_swain_work]

One thing to check is if any of the blocks used in the drawing have objects far out of the intended area. In Paper Space, you wont be able to see, or even select, these items.

[jwl41085]

best answer here. I was zooming out so far and unable to find what was out there in space.

your method works