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Viewing drawings

Zoom, fit, pan, thumbnails, bookmarks, search, search all documents and layers.

iCOS PDF opens even very large drawing sets quickly: a sharp image is drawn only for the part of the sheet you are looking at. This page covers zooming, moving around, finding pages and text, and layers.

How to zoom

  • Hold Ctrl and turn the mouse wheel: zooms around the pointer.
  • Ctrl+= (or Ctrl++) zooms in, Ctrl+- zooms out. The + and − buttons at the right of the toolbar do the same.
  • Type a percentage into the zoom box (e.g. 200) and press Enter.
  • Fit width and Fit page buttons next to the zoom box. Ctrl+0 = Fit page, Ctrl+1 = Actual size (100 %).
  • The View menu has Zoom in, Zoom out, Fit width, Fit page and Actual size.
  • While Fit width or Fit page is on, the zoom follows when you resize the window.
  • On a tablet: pinch with two fingers.

How to pan (move around the sheet)

  • Pan tool: press H (or the hand button), then drag. Press V to go back to Select.
  • Hold Ctrl and drag: a temporary hand with any tool.
  • Hold Space and drag: also a temporary hand.
  • Middle mouse button: drag with the wheel pressed.
  • The mouse wheel scrolls up and down.
  • On a tablet: drag with two fingers. One finger also pans when the Select tool is active and you are not touching a markup. With a drawing tool, one finger draws. Once you have used a pen, fingers only pan and zoom (palm rejection).

Pages

  • Type a page number into the Page box in the status bar and press Enter.
  • Thumbnails (first button on the left rail): click a page to go there.
  • PageUp / PageDown scroll.
  • After following a link to another sheet, View → Back (Alt+←) and View → Forward (Alt+→) take you back and forth.

Bookmarks

The Bookmarks button on the left rail (book icon) lists the file's bookmarks. Click one to go there. To add, rename or reorder bookmarks use Document → Edit bookmarks (see Office PDF tools); the bookmark editor has its own left-rail button, Edit bookmarks (bookmark icon).

How to search this document

  1. Press Ctrl+F (or Edit → Find, or the Search button on the left rail).
  2. Type and press Enter. Matches are highlighted on the pages and listed with the page number.
  3. Press Enter again for the next match, Shift+Enter for the previous one, or click a result.

Scanned drawings have no text to search. Run Document → Recognize text (OCR)… first (see Office PDF tools).

How to search all documents or a folder

  1. Press Ctrl+Shift+F (or Edit → Search all documents).
  2. Type and press Enter to search every open file.
  3. Include AutoCAD SHX text is on by default. Many CAD sheets drawn with SHX fonts carry their text only as hidden "AutoCAD SHX Text" comments; those hits are marked SHX.
  4. To search files that are not open, click Search a folder… and pick a folder, e.g. a NAS project folder. Tick Include subfolders to go deeper.
  5. Results are grouped by file. Click one to open the file at that spot.

Select and copy text

With the Select tool, drag across text on the page to select it, then press Ctrl+C (or the Copy button that appears in the status bar).

Layers

Drawings exported from CAD often have layers.

  1. Open View → Layers (or the Layers button on the left rail).
  2. Tick or untick layers to show or hide them. Show all, Hide all and Back to the file's layer states are at the top. Layers used on the current page are marked.
  3. This only changes what you see: saving and printing keep the file's own layer states.

If the file has none, the panel says "This document has no layers."

Panels

  • Click a rail button to open its panel, click it again to close it.
  • Drag the right edge of a left panel to make it wider or narrower.

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