Karl Hill wrote: "In AutoCAD 2009, what used to be a time-consuming process of trimming out a viewport's contents and changing the space of the paper space portions of a layout tab has now become a process of running the Exportlayout command and specifying a name for the new drawing to create. Type Exportlayout while on a layout tab, or right-click on the layout tab and select Export Layout to Model. The software will prompt you for the name and location of the new drawing file to be created. A default name will be supplied that is a combination of the current drawing file name, an underscore, and the name of the layout tab. You just need to browse to a location where you want the new drawing file to be created. Of course, you can supply whatever name you desire.

"The routine creates a new drawing file that has all of the model space entities that were visible in the viewport trimmed out to the viewport limits, and also all of the entities that were in paper space of that viewport moved to model space. So you wind up with a drawing that has only model space entities in it. It doesn't include any of the previous model space entities that were outside of the viewable limits of the original viewport. It basically compresses the layout into only model space entities.

"We find that many of our clients use non-AutoCAD programs that cannot use the paper space advantages of AutoCAD, so we have to compress them into just model space. This tip also comes in handy if you want to have a drawing file of just one layout sheet of a submittal set, and you don't want to send more information than what they really need. If you are working in AutoCAD Civil 3D, the Civil 3D objects are converted to polylines, text, etc., during the process as well, so that eliminates the problem of some clients' not being able to work with the Civil objects."

NOTES FROM CADALYST TIP PATROL:
This is a nice feature that is only available in 2009 products. This tool, as stated above, can help in sending AutoCAD file information to outside vendors, clients, and other agencies.