AutoCAD Tip – Quickly focus on selected objects within busy drawings

By Dennis Collin

AutoCAD has so many ways of doing simple operations, it is easy for users to miss some beneficial shortcuts. A common operation is performing Zoom functions, many users are aware of using the Wheel to Zoom and Pan and the Window, but AutoCAD has many other options to navigate to a desired part of a drawing. For many years now AutoCAD has had to ability to focus on a selected object, which is very useful when working on larger drawings spanning large areas.

In the drawing above a user wants to focus on a small part of the drawing, an easy way to achieve this is to select the desired elements and then type in Zoom (or Z shortcut) and choose the object option on the command prompt. AutoCAD will then centre the screen around the bounding box of selected items.

If keyboard entry or right-click menus are not a desired way of working, then the operation can be done purely by mouse clicks. Select the elements as per figure 1 and then click the centre of the View cube icon in the top right-hand corner of the screen which will achieve the same outcome.

Unfortunately, AutoCAD LT users do not have a View cube environment, but zooming to object functions via the command prompt, and right-click menus are available within LT.