AutoCAD 2006 view transitions

This is the one new addition to 2006 that most of my users either really love or really dislike. On the other hand, I don’t really care one way or the other since I do 99% of my zooming and panning with the mouse scroll button. I leave my View Transitions turned on with the default settings as shown here. The command name to access this dialog is VTOPTIONS.

vtoptions command

I suspect the users who dislike view transitions might not mind if the duration of the transition was shortened. I’ve had a chance to play with Inventor 10, and noticed the same type of view transitions. I suspect Inventor had this feature first. Feel free to let me know.

Like a lot of things in AutoCAD, there are ways to control these options without having to locate and execute the dialog. This can be helpful if you want to control these settings in a script, macro, or other customization routine. These system variables are described below.

  • VTENABLE – The default value is 3. See the help file for a table showing the meaning of each valid value, 0 through 7.
  • VTDURATION – Specify the duration of a view transition, in milliseconds.
  • VTFPS – Specify the minimum speed of a view transition, in frames per second.