From the course: AutoCAD 2026 Essential Training

Working in model space and paper space in AutoCAD - AutoCAD Tutorial

From the course: AutoCAD 2026 Essential Training

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Working in model space and paper space in AutoCAD

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- [Instructor] We're staying in our 00-Ground Floor Plan.dwg file. And at the moment we are in our model tab. Now, this is something that you need to consider when you are working with AutoCAD. All of your design work happens in the model tab full size. The model space in AutoCAD is infinite and it is defined by your X and Y. And if you're working in 3D, Z axes, so you're working with coordinates in those X, Y, and Z axes. Now, normally in your drawing you would see what is called a UCS icon. Now, at the moment, I haven't got it switched on, so I'm just going to show you that first. Type UCS icon, all one word like that, press enter. And can you see there, mine is currently set to off. So if I click on on, there's our little UCS icon there. Now, the whole idea of model space is it's infinite in those X and Y directions. The X and the Y on the UCS icon there, Y going upwards is positive. Y going downwards is negative. X going to the right is positive. X going to the left is negative. So that's how our coordinates work in our model space. And as I said, it's infinite, so you can draw anything and everything full size. Now, you need to get that full size floor plan, which is roughly 30 meters by 30 meters onto a sheet of paper. Now, it doesn't matter whether that's a physical sheet of paper or an electronic piece of paper, say a PDF for example. You have to make sure that you can communicate that design intent using what they call the layout tabs, which is sometimes known old fashionly or more traditionally as paper space. So you've got model space and paper space. If you think about it, model space, the model tab is where you model and you design. Paper space is where you print and communicate your design. So the layout tabs, the paper space are where you communicate. In this drawing, if you click on the ISO A1 Landscape layout tab, you can see there that there is a sheet of paper with a little rectangle and it is actually showing your floor plan in that rectangle. Now, that is a sheet of paper and it's an ISO A1 sheet, which is, if I remember rightly, 841 millimeters by 594 millimeters. Don't quote me on that, I think it is. You can check that if you want to just by hovering perhaps there and moving along. If I go along to there, can you see the cross hair? It's telling me there how big that is. Now, at the moment, it's an ISO A1. Now, what I need to check here is this little box here. Now, if I hover over it, can you see it's a view port? And if I hover there, it pops up and it tells me it's using a standard scale of one to 100. So what I've done, my model tab here, everything is full size. If I go in and say measure a doorway, there's a doorway there. Let's zoom in on that doorway and I'll go to measure here. It's on the home tab, on the ribbon, on the utilities panel. If I measure a distance there, click on distance from the flyout, use that endpoint snap to that endpoint snap. So that is 1155.70 millimeters wide, that doorway, so about 1.155 meters or 1155 millimeters. So that's how big that is. Now, here's the trick. If I go back here, I'm never going to fit that on an ISO A1 sheet. So I've made it a hundredth of its original size in a view port. So that's how you make sure that you communicate your design intent in AutoCAD. You make sure that in the model tab here, I'll just double click on the wheel to zoom extents. Everything is drawn full size. And then you put your designs into scaled view ports in the paper space on the layout tab. Now, we do get into that a bit more deeply as we work throughout the course. You'll see how to set up view ports, set up page setups so that you can communicate your designs from the model tab into the layout tabs, into the paper space. But that's how you work with model space, the model tab, and paper space, the layout tabs in AutoCAD.

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