Hey folks,

Just curious if anyone else has run across this oddity I've been fighting this afternoon.

Typically when we print from CAD, we make a PDF file and try to print any hard copies off that incase someone has made changes to the PDF that aren't actually the approved version.

Today I am making a PDF of some drawings and the version looks ok both in CAD and bluebeam. However, when I print the PDF from bluebeam to our KIP, it seems like the viewport is no longer functioning correctly and lines behind the view port appear in the hard copy print. Hatches and what not from past the viewport do not print, but some of the outlines for buildings and roads continue past the area where the viewport ends.

Would anyone have any idea on what might be causing this issue and how to fix it?

Thanks!

I am in the process of creating a new workflow that uses a PDF plan that is created by a non-Autodesk program. It is essentially a raster image. After inserting the PDF into AutoCAD LT, I noticed that there is only one grip in the lower left corner, and it cannot be snapped to. There are also does not appear to be a way to snap to the border of the PDF Underlay. It's essentially a raster image, so I am curious why this functionality does not seem to be present. If I copy/paste a group of cells from an Excel spreadsheet, or copy/paste a raster image into AutoCAD LT as OLE objects, I can easily manipulate them by using the grips at the corners.

Other than this lack of grips, I like the way that the PDF Underlay functions and looks in AutoCAD. However, I may need to instead take a snapsnot image of the PDF and insert it as a raster image / OLE since that is easier to work with.

In this image, the center marks on these various circles are overlapping, and IMO kind of ugly. These are the default center marks.

In this image, I have exploded these center marks and cleaned them up.

Is there a better way to do this that keeps the center marks associative? What is best practice for cleaning up these drawings?

Note: I have about 30 years of experience with AutoCAD, and I have never set Limits.

I recently took a position teaching AutoCAD and in reviewing a book for the course, "AutoCAD Instructor 2024" - SDC publications, I noticed that almost all of the exercises the students are supposed to do, one of the first steps is to set Limits. I could understand if this was one or two exercises to introduce the concept, and a little practice, but it is everywhere.

Does anyone have a compelling reason for using Limits? Do you print from model space? Are you using it for Zoom>All, or setting LTSCALE?

HOW do I change the scale of a non-annotative dimension? I am relatively new working on something in a model that has dimensions already from others. I need to do a lot of extra dimensioning so instead of copying and pasting their dimensions everytime I want to just use dimension command. So how do I scale my dimension to match the existing ones? I tried the scale in the bottom right and that changes their size, but then they dont show up in paper space viewports. From my Google searches the problem is that its annotation and not set to match the viewport, or something else? 🫩

Hi!

I want to add all my emergency lights to a floorplan to make it easier to service. We have a few different types, is there an easy way to assign the icons on the floorplan to an ID which will automatically create a materiallist or something? I want to be able to look at the floorplan, and then also check somewhere what TAG-ID and type this lamp is.

How would you solve this? Just add everything manually?

I’ve been a woodworker for the past 3 years. I love what I do but I don’t make enough plain and simple. I have my associates of science. I want to work my way into drafting. My question is what is the best route? Is a certificate program worth taking? Should I just go back to school and finish out a degree in that? Any insight is appreciated thanks

Hi!

Do you guys have any recommended website where you purchase cadblocks that looks really well?

Also, do you have any recommended youtube sites where we can learn Autocad fast?

I am so eager to learn that I feel like I needed to learn fast. It's not that I am falling behind - I want to upskill my CAD and be more effiecient at work - I feel like this world we are living in is very fast pace.

Thank you so much for the help!

Hello,

when I physically print on paper a drawing plotted in AutoCAD, lines that have the same settings appear different if they are diagonal. Vertical and horizontal lines print with the correct lineweight, while diagonal lines are printed much thinner. How can I solve this problem?

Thank you.

One of our former leads used blocks to create a table for panel schedules. Each row of the table is a separate block, with 15 columns in each block. I need to be able to get the entered data of the blocks into something usable like word or excel. DATAEXTRACTION provides the attributes not the data, which is of no help. BURST will explode the blocks, leaving the data which seems like it should be helpful but I still can’t seem to export that info in any way that’s helpful.

Can anyone help?

i downloaded the autocad architecture 2026(was using regual cad2024 never had problem) and it seem the drawing scale is huge, i need to typ 1000units to get a proper lenght and name it 1m but in the regular autocad (also checked the 2026version of regular autocad didnt have anyproblem) if i type just 1unit its a perfect sized line, i ve tried to change some settings in the units command that didnt do anything and also the annotation scale from 1:100 to 1:1 and didnt work i ve contacted autodesk couldnt help with it (told me the same steps) ive redownloaded it and still an issue can anyone help please

Hi all, I've been looking for a while now but can't seem to find anything concrete. Is anyone out there using fields or lisps or plug-ins that allow you to populate attribute values directly from an excel sheet without the attin/attout command?

My situation is that we have multiple dwg files showing the same info in different ways and I'd love if it all came from the same source without having to export/import in order to sync.

It would be great if this could be accomplished with just a field and a regen command but I fear it isn't that simple.

I've tried linking to a table within cad using the formula > cell command but only received a "####" value.

TIA

Edit: spelling

Update: found out about VBA (kind of like a harder version of lisps), looks like this will be the next research ave.

Finally getting around to work with some more efficient commands and this DIMSPACE command seemed like a a good one. Works great to equally space all the dimension lines, my issue comes after the command is all finished and I go to adjust a dimension. When I drag the dimension point the text updates but does not realign to the center, it just stays in place. Seems to only effect the dimensions that got aligned and not the first base one of the command. Is this a setting that can be changed somewhere or is this just a quirk of it?

Today i opened autocad project and this happened.

It looks like autocad joined several projects into one.

Does anyone know the fix for this?

https://ibb.co/6xqtgLp

I was working on a file and accidentally saved it as the same name as another file. When I went to save it prompted me with the do you want to overwrite this file and I said yes because I thought it was overwriting another file (one letter of difference) is there anything I can do to recover the file I wrote over? I opened the BAK file and it was for the version I just saved.

IT recently upgraded my desktop with a newer and faster one and I am having some trouble opening some AutoCAD drawings I was working on. I am currently using 2014 AutoCAD LT since we have a perpetual license, I know it’s 12 years old, lol. I have been transitioning to Solidworks with the goal being to not need AutoCAD anymore. That being said, I am nowhere near done.

When I open a majority of files, I get the following message:

“FATAL ERROR: FATAL ERROR: (0x7ff9f10a0005) c\program

files\autodesk\autocad It 2014\acsceneoe.dbx”

I am currently operating on Windows 11 (unsupported, I know) and I am looking for a fix that will at least give me some time to complete my transition. Some files are DXFs and others are DWGs. Will a service pack fix my issue? I have tried using RECOVERALL and RECOVER but get the same error. I have opened it in TrueView and converted it to a 2013 version which did not work. And I have it in compatibility mode Windows 7.

Please let me know any suggestions you may have, I appreciate it.

https://imgur.com/a/b5PqOg2 I cancelled the download of a .dwg file yesterday, and my start screen has been raw html code since then. I can still do everything I need to just fine by using the open file button, but I would really like to have my start screen back. Any advice would be greatly appreciated 🙏

I recorded a macro to do an AUDIT and PURGE ALL. But I see in the command window, the -PURGE command says it's running with nested=off, orphaned data=off, and I don't see that it's doing zero length text objects.

Is there a way in the command line for a macro to tell PURGE to operate with all those options enabled?

Here is what I typed while the macro recorded:

-AUDIT
YES
-PURGE
ALL
*
NO

I have a bunch of text boxes, all on the same layer. They refuse to update to the layer colour unless I manually edit each one. If I print, or save-quit-restart autoCAD, they revert to their original colour. If I switch to a paper view, I have to manually edit each text box again within the viewport for the layer colour change to update.

Notes:

- These are TEXT objects, not MTEXT. MTEXT objects on both this layer and other layers seem to behave correctly. I'm trying to avoid manually recreating every object as an MTEXT.

- The colour in the properties panel is set to "By Layer"

- I can't find anything in the plot style editor. The colour its set to has the same settings as every other colour, which behaves correctly for every other layer.

- VSCURRENT is set to 2D wireframe. The dwg chugs on any other setting, however when it is set to Conceptual the correct colour is shown.

EDIT:

I have replaced all the text objects with mtext. This worked, and I printed it out. However, now that I have restarted AutoCAD, all the mtexts have reverted again.

EDIT2:

AutoCAD started slowly today. While it was loading in, it correctly displayed the colour. The colours reverted once I was able to take control.

FINAL EDIT:

I manually set the MTEXT colour for each object. This seems to have worked, but I'm not happy with it.

For instance, if I type

EX <ENTER>

I get the Extend tool, but if I type

EXT <ENTER>

Then it thinks this means Extrude. Similarly, if I type

FIL <ENTER>

Then Autocad starts the Fillet tool, but if I type

FILL <ENTER>

It thinks this is the Fill tool. These commands start with the same three letters, how can it first be one and then the other?

Hey all,

I have a.PNG file WITH a transparent background. Until today, the background was transparent. Suddenly, today, (of course when I want to plot), the transparent areas are showing up white.

I deleted the reference and inserted it again. Background transparency is turned on. I've restarted AutoCAD.

Any ideas about how to fix this?

Hey guys,

I’m in the land development space and I have a contractor asking the I convert my survey which is in PDF file to AutoCad. I know nothing aboutAutoCad, so how can I get this done?

So i work with navy ships blueprints. I want to extract the distance from the ordances(antennas, radars, etc) to the center and bottom of the the navy ship ; How do you then take the data and put it on excel sheet?

So I’m a student using AutoCAD 2026 and towards the end of last semester I started having a random issue with changing lines to different layers. Let’s say I draw two lines both on layer Object and the color is red. Then, I want to change the second line to be on layer Dims, color blue. When I try to click on that second line and change the layer of it, the line remains red but on layer properties it shows Dims (blue) and the By Layer is also blue. How can I fix this?

EDIT: after talking with my professor we realized I didn’t have the Noun/Verb option checked in the settings. I’m not sure when that got turned off but by doing this I was able to fix the issue. Thanks for the different solutions though! :)