3D Drawing with AutoCAD - Section 8

34.1.9 Recording and reusing SCPs

Recall three issues discussed in chapter 15: a) that with the SCP dialog box we can record each SCP with a distinctive name to reuse them without re-creating them; 2) that the 6 SCP orthogonal of an 3D object already exists in this dialog box.

3) The Plant command modifies the object view until the current SCP is perpendicular to the screen.

Dynamic 34.2 SCP

Irrespective of all the tools for locating any SCP in any given point in the 3D space we have just studied, it is possible to activate a dynamic SCP before or during the execution of a drawing command, which will automatically adjust the plane XY to the face of a solid simply by placing the cursor on it. When the drawing command is finished, the SCP will return to normal. In this way, it is possible to create 2D or 3D drawing objects aligned with faces of existing 3D objects.
To activate a dynamic SCP, simply press the corresponding button on the status bar or the F6 key.

If we think about it a bit, it is easy to conclude that without this tool, drawing 2D objects on faces of 3D objects would most likely imply creating a SCP on that face first, to facilitate drawing. So dynamic SCPs save a fair amount of work.
If the current SCP is the only one we are going to use, then you may want to disable the dynamic SCP, which is as simple as pressing the status bar button again.
In addition, it is possible to enable the grid of the XY plane (which in the default views are equivalent to the floor of our 3D space) to temporarily adapt to the dynamic SCP, to visually facilitate the creation of the new object. To activate such visual aid, use the appropriate box on the Resolution and Grid tab of the Drawing Settings dialog box.

In turn, the appearance of the dynamic SCP cursor can be configured in the 3D Modeling tabbed dialog box of the Options dialog box. In these cases the cursor should show the Z axis. We can even add labels to the axes.