About Sheets, Spaces and Background Color

Below are some information about how paper spaces, model spaces, sheets and background colors are managed.

Options for spaces, sheets and background colors are found in the IGES 2D section of the Preferences.

This page discusses:

Paper and Model Spaces

At import, the management of views or drawings is automatic when the IGES 2D file is structured with views and drawings. However, you have to decide where to place paper and model spaces

Drafting provides a simple method to manipulate a sheet. A sheet contains:

  • A main view which supports the geometry directly created in the sheet.
  • A background view dedicated to frames and title blocks.
  • Interactive or generated views.

  • When Paper Spaces in Background is selected, the data lying on the paper spaces are put in the background view of the layout sheet. The viewports are created in the working view.
  • When Paper Spaces in Background is not selected, the data lying on the paper spaces are put in a new auxiliary view of the sheet. This auxiliary view is visible in the 3D. You can change the view support for auxiliary views
  • When Keep Model Space is not selected:
    • When the model space is referenced by no viewport (or if there is no viewport in the imported file), it is created in its own sheet (unless it is empty).
    • When the model space is referenced at least partially by one or several viewports, it is not created in its own sheet. Only layouts are created. They contain eventual viewports. The entities found completely or partially in the clipping view are imported. The entities found completely outside the clipping view are not imported. In this case, select Keep model space to force the creation of the model space in its own sheet with all its entities.

Exported Sheets

You can define which sheets of a multi-sheets drawing are exported.

Select the required Exported sheets option:

  • Only current: Exports the data to a file with the name entered in the Save as dialog box.
  • All: Exports the data to several files. The name of each file is made of the name entered in the Save as dialog box and the name of the sheet (Drawing1_sheet_1.ig2, Drawing_sheet_2.ig2, ...).

Note: Multi-sheet drawing export has some limitations:
  • When there are several sheets, the name of the file really created is not that entered by the user in the Save as dialog box, since it is concatenated with that of the sheet. Therefore, it is not possible to check if a file with the same name already exists and any existing file will be overwritten without warning.
  • If one of the sheets contains no geometry, no IGES 2D file is created.
  • The number of characters of the name of the result file is limited to 150.
  • If the name of a sheet contains one of the following characters \ / : * ? " < > ¦ . £ $ % ^ & ! # ~ @ ; or a blank space, the character will be replaced with _ (underscore).

Background Color

You can adapt the color of entities to the background color.

When Adapt the color mapping to the background check box is selected, the Black and White colors entities are turned either to black or to white depending on the background color.