I probably have a mistake or two in those descriptions somewhere.  You can let me know later where they are! 

SugarCAD wrote: In Page Setup is "Display Plot Styles" Checked?

It doesn't matter if you check it or not, but I always do because I will use named Page setups.  This can be especially helpful if you have a project where you want to print only selected colors... say, everything in black on white except for something you want to show with bold Red.  If you check Display Plot Styles and use a named page setup your viewports will display exactly as they'll print.  When they do that you really don't need to Preview as often.

Think of the Layout tabs like this:  as a big piece of paper covering your entire model.  When you cut a hole in the paper (a viewport) you see thru the paper and get to see the actual model.  But unlike an actual hole in the paper, with this one you can change the magnification factor.  That's the scale idea.

So, to start with, we'll go back to Step 0.  Go to your layout tab, Ctrl-A to select everything, and Delete.  You won't see anything now.  You just put a fresh sheet of paper on the layout.  Now type -VPORTS at the command line and if <Fit> is the default, simply hit the Enter key.  If <Fit> is not the default simply type 1 at the command line, stretch the rectangle to the opposite corner, and left click.  You'll have a viewport.  You can select it and change the size and fit from here if you want.

You should see *everything* in your model now.  You've effectively "cut" a hole in the paper now.  But this generally isn't what we want... we want to see just a part of the model.  Zoom Extents to make sure the entire layout is visible and then double click anywhere on the inside of the new viewport frame you created.  The viewport outline should be bold now because you "activated" it.  In fact, you're now working in Model space, but doing it from the Layout.

Now do a window zoom around one of the title block sections in your model.  This will fill your viewport.  If you now double click anywhere on the outside of the viewport frame the frame will return to a thin line and will no longer be active.  Anything you do now will be in the Layout space.

To see what the scale is of the viewport, single click the frame and look on the status bar.  A scale will be shown.  It will probably say "Custom".  You can change this to one of the standard scales that's provided or to something that fits your model.  It's important to Lock the viewport once you've set up keeper scale so that you don't accidentally mess it up when you activate the viewport later.

Now, here's the thing.  Most of us don't put our title blocks in the model anymore.  We just put the model there.  The title block is drawn in the Layout ... on the paper.  Then once that's done we cut the viewport hole in it and scale that viewport to see the model, or portion of it we want.

Mess around with this a bit until it starts to make sense.  We'll continue with more questions from there.

Dave.

If there is an "easy" way I'm not using it.  Here's what I do:

Yes, exactly.  That's what I do.  I have a template for ANSI A (8.5x11) and one for ANSI B (11x17) that are my primaries.

Edited by heinsite - 17.Jul.2012 at 20:06