Must-Know AutoCAD Site Plan Tips! – Secret Viewport Tools: North Arrows, Scalebars & Text Automation

Hope you’re having a great day and week so far, it’s been a busy one here but I’m excited to share a new video and build on a previous video where we created a Site Plan/Location plan drawing using multiple viewports. If you haven’t seen the Viewport Tips video you can check it out here. I’ve really enjoyed sharing and creating videos about land-based drawings like site maps, property layouts, and civil design drawings in general and they’re something I work on almost every day and get asked about often.
Especially as more of you have taken my Civil 3D Crash course over time, it’s apparent many of us are in similar industries and have a need for tutorials about these types of drawings. It also blends and fit’s in well with our regular sponsor, Plex Earth.
Plex Earth allows you to instantly import recent and historical imagery, terrain data, and contours directly into our AutoCAD drawings. They even have the option to order and schedule a drone flight for your project area within the app if you need even more up-to-date imagery!

If you haven’t given Plex Earth a try yet, I highly recommend them. If you use the link down below, you can get a free trial to Plex earth pro for cad intentions viewers.
Try Plex Earth Now: http://cadintentions.com/plex_ci Now let’s jump right into today’s video: In this week’s video, I wanted to build on the viewport/site plan drawing we made a few weeks ago and share some awesome, somewhat hidden/secret tools in AutoCAD to make your Site Plans better and easier to create! By following these steps and using the commands and tips in the video, we will take advantage of the AutoCAD free Map Toolset and utilize some “hidden” tools that will allow us to easily add dynamic north arrows, scalebars, and text in a matter of seconds! Almost every drawing you create as a Civil designer or drafter will need a North Arrow and Scalebar. I just recently helped my Dad with some site plans for the City where we live in order for him to apply to subdivide a property and the submission requires a Scaled Plan which is made much easier when you understand viewports and scales in AutoCAD.  Don’t miss today’s video, click the link and learn how we can quickly make a drawing more accurate and dynamic in just a few minutes! 
Must-Know AutoCAD Site Plan Tips! – Secret Viewport Tools: North Arrows, Scalebars & Text Automation

That’s all for today, I hope you were able to take something away from the tutorial, and if you have any questions be sure to leave a comment below or reach out on Twitter @cadintentions. As always, thank you so much for reading, I am excited to be back and posting regularly on the blog and hope you all will follow along. Cheers, and happy Drafting! PS. If you liked today’s video or any of my videos/tutorials and you want to learn over 15 years of AutoCAD Tips & Tricks in a hurry, you can use this link to get my AutoCAD Fundamentals Course and join 100’s of fellow drafters/designers and get started right now!

---

Also published on Medium.