Mark H. McLeod, a project engineer, shares several ways to use the Change Space command in AutoCAD and its verticals.

"Use the Change Space command (ChSpace) to move lines, text, and objects back and forth through a viewport between model space and paper space. It can be extremely useful to ensure that text remains at a consistent size when you have multiple viewports of different scales on a layout. I also use it with my detail sheets; rather than have multiple viewports, which can take time to regenerate, I create a single viewport at 1:1 scale that is as large as the printable space within my border. I draw a rectangle on a no-plot layer in paper space, then change space to drop it into model space. I can organize all of my details and I know what my limits are."

Notes from Cadalyst tip reviewer Brian Benton: The ChSpace or Change Space command is one of the most useful from the Express Tools set. More recent versions of AutoCAD (and its verticals) have moved the ChSpace command into the native set of commands for AutoCAD. That means it is available in all verticals and in AutoCAD LT.

I have noticed that using ChSpace on annotative text (text that automatically scales based on viewport scale) can cause weird things to happen. Change Space automatically scales the text height to match the new scale of the viewport or model space. That can mess with annotated text and cause problems if you copy those specific objects to another file. If you get a file with annotated text that's behaving strangely, it might have been altered by ChSpace.