small viewport within big viewport

[Eleanor.smith]

I would like to overlay a small viewport showing a detail completely within a larger viewport displaying a general view. The result that I usually get involves seeing the larger viewport contents in the background of the smaller viewport. How can I hide the larger viewport contents that show through the smaller viewport?

I found this question asked in 2001 with not very satisfactory answers. I'm having exactly the same problem now and wondering if things have improved? I'm using 2017 LT.

[dbroad · Accepted solution]

You probably have a few options. 

1) Add a wipeout down first over the large viewport to mask the region for your enlarged detail.  Viewports don't have opaque backgrounds.  Then add the large scale viewport over the wipeout.

2) If what is displayed in the large viewport is an xref or block, you can use clipping to mask the area to be depicted by the large scale viewport.

3) The large viewport can be polygonal wrapping around the enlarged viewport.

If it were me, I would avoid overlapping viewports entirely.  It usually creates other problems, when toggling between viewports.  Use annother strategy to save space.

[Patchy]

Make it work (no Satisfaction, where is the link to it?)

[RobDraw]

No improvements. I don't know what you would consider a satisfactory answer. You need to think of a viewport as a window without glass into model space. If you don't want to see part of the view through that window, you've got two choices.

Block that part of the window. In AutoCAD, that could be a wipeout.

Change the construction of the window. Since there is no glass in the window, you can't just simply put another window in it. Also, the viewport needs to be a single continuous entity that does not cross itself. I would trace the shape of the viewports with a connector. In the example below, I've created a clipped viewport with a single non-crossing polyline. The connector is actually two segments just slightly offset. They can be close enough so that the gap is not noticeable on a print.

[Eleanor.smith]

thanks to all for your input