A view group is a set of view window layouts applicable to models within the open DGN file. View groups make it easy to access and navigate through different models. View groups let you set up your session to display your view window preferences including the number of open views, view size, and orientation. As well, a view group definition includes the attributes for each view and their level display settings.

Using view groups, you can quickly change from one configuration to another. For example, in some stages of the design process, you might prefer to arrange the screen with View 1 showing the Isometric view and covering two-thirds of the screen, while Views 2, 3 and 4 share the remaining part of the screen equally and show the Front, Bottom and Right views respectively. For other stages, you may like to have a single Isometric view, covering the whole work area.

When you create a model, you are prompted to create a view group associated with that model by turning on Create a View Group in the Create Model dialog.

When you create a view group from the template for the view group, by default, the view group is the active view group. However, another view group can be designated by setting the configuration variables MS_VIEWGROUPSEEDNAME or MS_VIEWGROUPSEED. MS_VIEWGROUPSEEDNAME allows you to set the name of the view group in the current file to use as a template. MS_VIEW GROUPSEED allows you to set the name of the file where the template view group is located.

You can also associate different models to the same view group by creating multi-model view groups. Multi-model view groups allow you to view more than one model or saved view from the same DGN file in separate views.

There are two methods for creating multi-model view groups. One is by applying a saved view and other is by selecting a model from the Models drop-down in the View Attributes dialog. In both methods a new view group with the name “Multi-Model Views” is created. This new view group contains the applied model or saved view in the active view. You can create a view group that displays from one to eight different models or saved views.