James J. Olszewski shares a trick for prepping your AutoCAD viewports to be clipped or stretched.

"Some CAD users are unaware that viewports can be anything other than the restrictive rectangle initially provided by AutoCAD upon opening a new drawing. That viewport is reduced all along its length or height, which can be very limiting. What I do instead is draw a multipoint viewport. Even if it's an overall rectangular shape initially, I include not just four corners but at least two additional points on each of the four sides. I draw a closed polyline along the sides of a rectangle, then use the VPorts command from the Viewports toolbar to convert it to a viewport.

"I do this when I begin a drawing, making it much easier to crop the view to exclude or include a variety of details in the viewport. It also expedites notching out around notes or legends that may get added to a sheet later. It is helpful to use the VpSync command when creating new or overlapping viewports so that everything meshes together as needed."

Notes from Cadalyst Tip Reviewer Brian Benton: Users can create viewports by first making a closed polyline. Once this method has been used, editing the viewport is easy enough: Just grip-edit it. The VpSync command is an Express Tool. It will align the viewports so that they look at model space in one continuous view. The viewports themselves don’t move, but the view inside them is moved and scaled so that they are all in line and in scale.