AutoCAD Troubleshooting

Overview

This page covers troubleshooting in AutoCAD.

My crosshair movement is very slow / erratic

This is mostly caused by no or insufficient graphics acceleration. It will improve when turning off the Dynamic Input (F12), but that is not a real solution.

1. Make sure Hardware Acceleration is enabled: Tools » Options » System tab » Performance Settings » Manual Tune
2. Make sure you use recent drivers for your graphics card
3. For NVidia graphics cards: Install the AutoCAD Performance Driver

My plot to PDF has pixels instead of vectors

Make sure the visual style of your viewport is set to 2D wireframe and not realistic, shaded or any other style that outputs pixels instead of vectors.

You can change the visual style by activating the viewport and click the visual style in the top left corner, or View » Visual Styles.

My plot shows object colors despite setting different plot colors in my plot style table

Make sure the visual style of your viewport is set to 2D wireframe and not realistic, shaded or any other style that ignores plotstyles.

You can change the visual style by activating the viewport and click the visual style in the top left corner, or View » Visual Styles. To preview the colors in your viewport, Display Plotsyles must be enabled in your page setup.

When opening or saving a file, i don't get a dialog window, but just a command line

There is a setting that determines whether AutoCAD uses a graphical dialog window or just the command line.

This setting can be changed by entering the command FILEDIA. Setting it to 1 will cause AutoCAD to use a graphical interface when opening or saving a file.

I expect a dialog window when i use a command, but i get a command line version instead

Some command, like hatch or array normally use a graphical dialog for the settings. But there is a setting that can change this to a command line version.

This setting can be changed by entering the command CMDDIA . Setting it to 1 will cause AutoCAD to use a graphical interface when using commands that have one.

Dimensions use paperspace values instead of modelspace values

You can configure AutoCAD to use modelspace values when creating dimensions in paperspace (snapped onto objects in a viewport). This is default and normally how you create your drawing dimensions. But sometimes this setting gets changed.

This setting can be changed by entering the command DIMASSOC. Setting it to 2 will yield the default behavior where dimensions use modelspace values when applicable.

The view in my viewport is reset as soon as i activate another viewport or change my UCS

AutoCAD has a system variable UCSFOLLOW that, when set to 1, will reset the view to a default plan view (equivalent to when you 'zoom all') as soon as the UCS (User Coordinate System) changes. This may occur when you activate a viewport that uses another UCS.

You can change this behavior by entering the command UCSFOLLOW and entering 0 as value. You may have to set this globally (from model space) and per viewport. For each viewport, activate it by doubleclicking in the viewport and enter the command UCSFOLLOW 0.

My AutoCAD settings / profile doesn't work on the faculty computers

Note: this only applies for the computers on the faculty of Architecture!

Your AutoCAD settings may become corrupted, especially when you run out of disk space on your H:-drive.

• Check whether your H:-drive isn't full. Clean it to make sure you have enough free disk space
• Close AutoCAD when running.
• Go to "C:\Program Files\AutoCAD 2009"
• Start ConfigBKACAD2009USRSettings.EXE

This should do the trick.

I get ARX Errors when opening a file

Errors like ARX Error: eDuplicatekey or ARX_ERROR: eNotthatKindOfClass may occur when opening a file. In most cases it is pretty harmless but still annoying. You can either use a workaround: Export to AutoCAD, or you could apply an update from Autodesk: ARX Error hotfix.

I lost parts of the interface

See also: Starting with Autocad 2009 and Starting with Autodesk Map 3D

Source of the information below: blog.cadnauseam.com.

Workspace

In vanilla AutoCAD, you can restore much of the user interface by just switching workspaces. In the bottom right corner, there is a little button that looks like a gearwheel. This is the Workspace control. Click on it and pick the item called AutoCAD Classic. If you’re using a vertical variant of AutoCAD 2010, this workspace may not be available. If so, or if you want finer control over your interface, read on.

Pull-down Menus

Enter MENUBAR 1 to turn pull-down menus on. To turn them off again, enter MENUBAR 0.

Toolbars

In AutoCAD 2009, you could turn individual toolbars on and off by accessing a menu obtained by right-clicking on the QAT. Autodesk (vindictively?) removed that option in 2010. That menu is still available if you right-click in an unused docked toolbar area, but if you have no toolbars visible there will be no such area available. What to do? Turn on one toolbar at the Command prompt, then you will be able to access the menu by right-clicking on the blank area to the right of it. The following command sequence will do it:

_.-TOOLBAR ACAD.Standard _Top 0,0

Note that this will only work if you have the acad.cuix file loaded (or partially loaded). This is the case in vanilla AutoCAD and some verticals (e.g. AutoCAD Civil 3D), but it may not be the case in other verticals (e.g. AutoCAD Architecture).

Ribbon

You can close the Ribbon with the RibbonClose command. If you ever want to turn it back on, enter Ribbon.

Dashboard

The AutoCAD 2007/8 Dashboard is gone, but you can have a vertical Ribbon instead. If the Ribbon is not visible (it won’t be if you just selected the AutoCAD Classic workspace), enter Riboon to bring it back. In the tab title row (the bar with the word Home in it), right-click and pick Undock. Now you can place and size your Dashboard-like thing as you see fit. As before, you can right-click on things to change the various settings. However, getting the contents exactly the way you want it usually involves using CUI, and that’s well outside the scope of this post.

Crosshair vanishes in maximized viewport

When maximizing the viewport in AutoCAD 2010 the crosshair seems to vanish. It is still possible to select elements but the crosshair cannot be seen. This is due to the fact that the crosshair color is not changed from the black it had in paperspace to the white it would need in modelspace. A solution is to change the crosshair color until AutoCAD has published an update that fixes the problem. This can be accomplished by going to Tools>Options>Display>Colors, select Crosshair for 2D Model Space and change the color to for example red.