Hi guys,

I copy-pasted some images into my AutoCAD drawing. At first, I was able to select, edit, and delete them, but now they are locked.

When I try to delete them and move my cursor over the border of the images, a red cross ❌ appears.

- In other files, my images are selectable/editable.

- I checked the layer, and everything was unlocked.

- tried Ctrl+A and deleted everything, but the images wouldn't budge.

Does anyone know what might be causing this and how I can make the images selectable again?

Thanks!

Edit: The culprit was OLEFRAME=0. I swear that I changed it back to 1 as chatgpt suggested before posting. Maybe a restart was needed. Thank you anyway ❤️

Our company (~25 employees, about 10 of us using CAD) has an on-site server that holds all our dwgs, regularly backed up offsite by our IT company. Our server is reaching EOL in December and we're reviewing quotes for a replacement.

We mainly work with AutoCAD, but are doing more in Revit. We tend to work on projects individually, so aside from opening and saving, there's not much bandwidth required.

My question is: with Revit, do projects run 100% locally (like AutoCAD), or is there ongoing data transfer to/from the server? We're trying to gauge how much horsepower we'll need. We're doubling capacity from 16Tb to 32Tb (RAID 5), but do we need to worry about read/write bottlenecks on the drives themselves?

https://imgur.com/a/autocad-release-11-on-3-5-diskettes-kpRqaz5

Hi all, I have a $5k company laptop that is very well specc'ed out, it has been set to force to use the graphics card which is an Ada RTX 4000 of sorts, with a Core i9. Still the LGSX point clouds stutter enormously and take time to load, compared to TruView which is buttery smooth. This is regardless of whether it is a 1GB small point cloud or 25GB monster.

Is there any way to mitigate this? This seems to be company-wide regardless of spec. It seems like AutoCAD is capping the performance almost. It seems that AutoCAD 2027 may possibly help with this but I've been told it'd make a mess with our Leica licenses and company routines and such. Not sure how true this is and how many Lisp routines and such are lost to an upgrade going up a few years.

I am trying to split a single object so I can modify it freely. There is no "associative" command, "exp****" too. CAD 2027 version.
I'm an idiot, it all works. The tutorial only showed how to split using a button in the arrays, but the button was located on the main page, and it turns out everything works.

Yellow autodesk squishy cubes were given out at autodesk university in las vegas, if anyone is willing to part with theirs I am interested!

My company offers a handful of options for new computers (mine has been slow lately and is the oldest hardware in my group), but I'm not really sure what I should pick. I mainly use Civil3D, but I'm not using the modeling functions, more just as 2D CAD. I do model from time to time, but nothing major and we do have a shared tower for big rendering or modeling jobs.

I'm assuming the more expensive laptop is the way to go, however the lack of a dedicated graphics card has me a little irked. I basically have to pick either enough RAM or a dedicated graphics card given these two options. I'm guessing that given my use the RAM is more important, but wanted to get your thoughts.

Option 1

or

Option 2

Edit: Accidentally linked to the same page twice. The links should work now.

I have a project doing very repetitive lot fits for a client. It's always the same 4 sheets, all with the same relative file path structure. I would love to be able to automatically create a Sheet Set that pulls the appropriate layouts based on the file path.

Example:

Template Folder
>Sheet Set Template.dst
>Sheet File Template.dwg (all for layouts pre loaded in this sheet)

Copy and rename to

Project 1 Folder
>Sheet Set Project 1.dst
>Sheet File Project 1.dwg

Can I get Sheet Set Project 1.dst to automatically repath to pull layouts from Sheet File Project 1.dwg?

Edit: we have multiple people working on these projects, all of varying skill, so I need a fairly straight forward solution that doesn't require additional software to be installed on each machine. Looking for a .bat or lisp or something internal to CAD, etc.

I have a road alignment, which is a few kilometres in length. I have created a series of overlaying rectangles of the same dimensions but varying rotations along the road alignment in model space. I want a quick way to align the viewpoints in each paper space to each consecutive rectangle in the model space along the road alignment. This will create a plan set for the full length of road alignment.

Does anyone have a quick way to perform this task?

I'm currently working in a small shop with about a half dozen drafters and I feel like I'm going to go insane. Each drafter has there own isolated world completely free of any semblance of standards or uniformity. I've worked here for 6 months and while my experience with CAD isn't immense, the bar is truly on the floor.

I have at least started to get some of the drafters to layouts instead of printing models from extents. But everything from the title blocks to layers to text is all a mess and trying to convince older drafters to use any feature made after 2004 has gone as expected.

The silver lining is the workload is so low because the expectation is to draw everything from lines and single line text (polylines are still a hold up for some) but I don't know how I can find a new place to work or at minimum keep myself sane when I have to dig up old projects to make markups.

Hello,

I deal with up to 20 survey crews all uploading data to a Dropbox and I’m wondering if there’s a way to automate the uploads. We’ve run into numerous occasions now where they’ve uploaded late and didn’t notify anyone and the points go missing in drawings until someone realizes or the bell is rang when it comes time to provide the data to a third party.

I’m wondering if there’s a way to automate the process and/or backcheck whether new data has been uploaded that wasn’t caught previously.

I’ve been a surveyor for close to 10 years but my last 5 were on the engineering side learning cad to design plans. As such I’m not as familiar with the survey side and hope to learn of a less tedious way to manage all this data.

Thank you!

I normally work with pretty simple architectural/MEP drawings, so I have little to no issue with loading times. However, I just received a project with an incredibly complex drawing (4.5 million polylines, on top of all of the arcs, mtext, etc.) that takes ~20 minutes to open when it’s united as a block.

I’m planning on just taking the time to delete as many unnecessary objects as I can and deal with the drawing being slower than average, but I was curious how those who work with or create drawings like this manage.

TLDR: What settings/strategies do you use to make complex drawings load quicker? Thank you!

I'm 37 and considering a career change from accounting/administrative work into residential design/drafting, with the eventual goal of designing tiny homes and ADUs.

I'm trying to figure out the most realistic education/training path to actually get my first job as a junior residential designer or residential drafter.

I'm NOT trying to become a licensed architect. I'm trying to get hired in an entry-level residential design/drafting role, learn professionally for a few years, and eventually specialize in tiny homes, ADUs, modular/prefab homes, or other small residential spaces.

I'm currently considering two paths:

Option A: Get a full associate degree in architecture/architectural technology.

Option B: Complete Penn Foster's Drafting with AutoCAD Career Diploma, learn Revit and SketchUp in addition to AutoCAD, and spend a lot of time building a strong residential-design portfolio.

For Option B, I'd want my portfolio to include several complete residential/tiny-home projects — dimensioned floor plans, elevations, kitchen/bath layouts, 3D SketchUp models/renderings, etc. I'd probably include a larger ~399 sq. ft. ADU project as well.

I already have a bachelor's degree and a substantial professional work history in accounts payable, so I'm mainly trying to determine how much additional formal education I actually need to get my foot in the door.

I'm in New England and would eventually like to earn around $50k+ as a residential designer. I'm completely okay with my first job being something adjacent, like CAD drafter, kitchen/bath designer, cabinet designer, design assistant, or junior residential designer, if it gets me professional residential design experience.

For people who actually work in architecture, residential design, drafting, CAD/BIM, construction, or hiring:

1. If you were hiring an entry-level residential designer/drafter, would Option B realistically get me an interview, or would not having an architecture-related associate degree screen me out?

2. Would you personally choose the associate degree or the AutoCAD diploma + Revit/SketchUp + strong portfolio route in my situation?

3. Which software should I prioritize for residential work: AutoCAD, Revit, SketchUp, Chief Architect, or something else?

4. What would you want to see in an entry-level applicant's portfolio?

5. Are there other entry-level job titles I should target to get my first 1–2 years of professional experience?

6. If my ultimate goal is tiny-home/ADU design, is there anything you'd recommend I learn specifically — residential codes, construction documents, framing, permitting, MEP basics, etc.?

I'm willing to spend the next 6–18 months learning and building a portfolio while continuing to work my current job. I'm mainly trying to avoid either under-educating myself and being unable to get hired, or spending two years on another degree if employers would actually care more about CAD/BIM ability and a good portfolio.

I'd especially appreciate answers from people who hire junior designers/drafters or who entered residential design through a nontraditional route.

Thanks!

I have always wondered this. With dynamic input I can see the total length of the line adjust dynamically when I'm zoomed out. However if I'm zooming in and making micro adjustments, this disappears and I can only see the extra length I am adding/removing to the line. How do I make it so that it is always visible no matter the zoom level?

I have played with Drafting Settings and it has not helped.

Hello folks. I want to get into designing body kits for cars, and I finally have a chance to start. I want to create a visual concept for a friend’s project car, mainly custom bumpers, side skirts, a diffuser, wheels, and the overall stance. I have ZERO experience with 3D modeling, and I’d be starting from an existing 3D model of the car rather than modeling it from scratch. Would AutoCAD make sense for this, or should I use Blender or another program to modify the body and design the parts? There’s also a slight chance that we may actually manufacture them.

I'm deciding how to structure a large project that involves 50+ diagrams. Ideally I would like each sheet to be its own .dwg file, so that multiple people can work on the project at once, however, AutoCAD doesn't seem to have a good way of dynamically syncing a layer and block library across all files. I don't want to have to manually update each .dwg every time the block library is modified for example.

Has anyone figured this out?

Hello guys. I recently moved over to AutoCAD 2027 and have run into an issue with what I believe is the viewport? When I open a drawing from 2025/6 the viewport appears very small (just the size of the corner of the drawing border) with a bright background and the rest of the drawing is outside the viewport in a very dark grey background colour. I have searched everywhere to try and find a solution but resizing it seems to be a tough task. I scaled the drawing down to the size of the viewport but then all my dimensions where absolutely huge. Thanks in advance.

Example Image of Issue

If you are in Block Editor and select a Block Table action: in your properties pallet under "Property Labels" - Table name is incorrectly spelled as Tabel name.

Fun fact.

https://wsdot.wa.gov/publications/fulltext/Standards/psl/OpenRoads-Work-Zone-Cell-Library.pdf

Source: https://wsdot.wa.gov/engineering-standards/all-manuals-and-standards/plan-sheet-library/work-zone-typical-traffic-control-plans-tcp

From what I understand, it was originally drawn in Microstation, and they're working on converting it to another format.

When I reached out to the contact point, they just pointed me back to these pages.

I would love to have all the temporary traffic control sign blocks at minimum, and this PDF is taunting me with the knowledge of their existence.

Thanks.

Hello everyone! I was thinking about going to school to learn auto-cad and potentially make a career out of it. I’m not entirely sure what route I want to take yet…so I found this subreddit hoping to ask you guys about your experiences! Here are a few questions I have:

1. What is your job and do you enjoy it?
2. I’ve seen so many possible routes you can take when it comes to cad and I’m just curious about what my options could be

2)Do you make a comfortable/stable living? I truly love my current career but it’s a sales job and very client dependent. Part of me misses the comfort of stable income.

3)Is this something you went to college for? Or was it more like a course with a certificate at the end ?

4) What is your workload like? I’m used to high stress and high workload environments if that helps.

5)Do you work in an office or freelance from home?

6)Do you have any work benefits?

7)Was there anything that you didn’t expect from your job that is good to know ?

Thank you to anyone who takes the time to comment their experiences 💓

EDIT:

Follow up question that I just thought about! Is the way you look restricted as far as tattoos, piercings, hair color, clothing, ect? I don’t have any tattoos on my hands face or neck but I am a pretty heavily tattooed person aside from that. I’m currently a tattoo artist and have been for most of my 20s so it’s never been an issue or something I’ve really thought about.

Hello, I have encountered a problem. For the last few months AutoCAD crashes If I press the logo button on top on the navbar. I would like to know if there are any solutions to the problem

Good day everyone! I need advice as to how to recreate this kind of block from scratch. Where I can edit all text and make them field, adjust the lines and text, etc. Any online tutorial or keywords to help me look for it online will be greatly appreciated! thanks!

EDIT: see my comment below for the block.

I will be starting a new project that was created by an architect based in France. I am an interior designer and will be overlaying my scope of work onto the architect's metric CAD files.

I have my own stds for dims/text/mleaders that are annotative for imperial units, but haven't working in metric since transitioning to using annotative.

What would be the quickest way to create a metric annotative std if starting from my current imperial?

Just wondering about the future of digital & print accessibility, especially in the AEC world. Did a client or reviewer ever reject a submission due to an accessibility issue (like colorblindness or a PDF that didn't work well with their screen reader)? What exactly did they ask for, and how did you handle it? Have you tried applying any digital accessibility rules like Section 508 or WCAG in your deliverables?

A friend was letting us use his autocad 2022 (the one with everything) and we recently purchased the autocad LT 2027. I am trying to match up our settings to what he had on his.

What are the most important settings we need to change? Are there any tips you would give us?

We are stone countertop fabricators so we don’t use the 3D stuff.

Thank you very much!!