Wheel Tips!

It’s been almost nine years since wheel mouse support was first included in AutoCAD. Back then, owning a wheel mouse was a luxury. Now, it’s the standard. I’ve been surprised, however, at how many people don’t take full advantage of wheel mouse functionality. Do you still rely on zoom and pan buttons? Or press Z to zoom? Sometimes it’s tough to break those old habits, but if you can get used to using the mouse wheel for zooming and panning, you’ll save countless picks and clicks!

Use the wheel to zoom and pan in your drawing without using any commands. When you roll the mouse forward, AutoCAD zooms into the cursor location, minimizing the need for you to first zoom and then pan! When you roll the wheel back, AutoCAD zooms out from the cursor location. You can reverse this behavior (roll forward to zoom out, back to zoom in) by changing the ZOOMWHEEL system variable from 0 to 1. Each increment that you roll the wheel changes the zoom level by the percentage specified with the ZOOMFACTOR system variable. The default value is 60 but you can change it to any value from 3 to 100. The higher the value, the more it will zoom. You can quickly zoom to the extents of the drawing by double-clicking the mouse wheel.

You can use the mouse wheel to pan by holding it down while you drag the mouse. If you press the CTRL key while holding and dragging the wheel, AutoCAD performs a continuous pan in the direction you push the mouse. The farther you push the mouse, the faster it will pan.