Zoom and Pan should not be part of the design history
This topic has been discussed in great length several times. Put something like "combine zoom and pan" in the Search window. There's a setting for combining them in Undo, and there's the Undo pull-down that you can use to back off more than just a single operation, past any intermediate zooms/pans.
@f_pisecker wrote:
When I undo, I want to undo actual changes to my document not a zoom, when I pan I don't want to have to save the file, I DIDN'T CHANGE ANYTHING
at least make it an option, every single other program in existence works like that. Even MSPaint works like that.
The worst part is undoing a ton of changes and if you so much as breath near your mouse the entire redo history is overwritten. Am I being insane? This is madness.
While I understand the frustration, zooming and panning are making changes if you think of what you see on the screen as a view. When you zoom and pan you are changing the view. That said, i get what you are saying, you just have to think of what is happing a little differently to see the 'why'.
If you find your self moving from one particular view to another i would recommend looking into saving named views which can help when dealing with moving from one section of the drawing to another with a single action.
In addition to what @Kent1Cooper mentioned with the undo stack, there is also the OOPS command which can be used to undo deletions without undoing the changes in view.
CADnoob
@BillAllenSE wrote:
.... No program I'm familiar with (Excel, Word, Bluebeam) requires one to save for just looking at a file. It's ridiculous that AutoCAD still does.
What?? It offers you the opportunity to save if you want to, if you've moved around at all even if you haven't changed anything other than the view. But that's a far cry from requiring it. Maybe that's not really what you meant.
And I consider it an advantage that I can open a drawing, get around to some particular view of things, and even if I haven't changed any drawn content when I go to close it, be offered the choice to Save it that way. Then if I chose to, the next time I get into it, I will be there at that view of things. MS Word, for example, doesn't do that [maybe newer versions can -- I'm not on the latest], but no matter where I am in a document when I save and exit, when I next open it I'm back at the top again, and have to do something to get to where I was [such as use a bookmark if I thought to set one] before continuing to work in it there.
But in any case, we're not really adding to the discussion with points that have been made multiple times before. Go to >Product Feedback< to register your preference -- maybe you'll find something already there that you can vote for -- and as more such requests pile up, maybe they'll do something with it, at least to give options.
@BillAllenSE wrote: @f_pisecker...Panning and zooming is not editing, IMO. the drawing has not changed. Yes, the view has changed, but the content has not....
UNDO does this (see below), often forgotten by some users, "editing" is not an option or sub-option but you can explore what it can do further down that HELP page
And you can for sure explore these commands and variables to see what the program as is does today and likely for the near future:
I'll chime in with a slightly different idea. When closing and AutoCAD determines a change has been made, it will ask you whether or not you want to save the changes. If the drawing has been open more than a couple of minutes, the tendency is to go ahead and say yes to avoid losing valuable changes. This can create a need to document the changes in a document management system and create unnecessary busywork and confusion. It also requires backups of documents that essentially haven't changed and loses potentially valuable backup files if an unnecessary save is made.
Suggestion: The close dialog should report the kinds of changes made. For example, if the change has only been which layout is open, which viewport is active, and whether the document is viewed differently, it should report that no changes have been made to the model or documentation. That would allow the drawing to be closed without saving without a lingering question of potential loss.
