AutoCAD - To Stop Automatic Viewport Creation

By Martin Phelps

Starting a drawing using one of the many AutoCAD supplied template files, when switching to paper space, AutoCAD will automatically create a “Viewport” as shown in Figure 1.

Using this template may be inconvenient for a couple of reasons. By default, the allocated paper size to “Layouts 1 and 2” is A4 portrait and the created “Viewport” is in the middle of the page, which may not be the correct size, or shape and not in the right position, or all three. So, the viewport has to be either repositioned and resized, or deleted and recreated.

To stop this automatic “Viewport” creation, open the “Options” dialogue in the lower left of the “Display” tab, in the “Layout Elements” section remove the check in the box “Create Viewport in New Layouts” as shown in Figure 2.

This will at least allow the user to create the “Viewport” as required, but by far the best option is to spend some time creating all the required “Page Setups”, borders, title blocks, layers etc and then saving the file as a “Template” which can then be used as the start-up file whenever a new drawing file is to be created.