Everyday problems

This list is intended to act as a guide to everyday problems that occur when using AutoCAD software.

These problems are ones that I have seen many different users fall foul of and will also hopefully provide you with food for thought if you have experienced anything listed here yourself and no doubt gone through the accompanying frustration.  

Obviously, it is not my intention to provide any solutions to the problems in this document, as I would be doing myself out of business! The topics listed here along with numerous others similar form the basis of a popular training session that I offer that covers practical solutions and all round help and advice.  

If you are in the unfortunate position of finding yourselves quieter than you would like due to the current economic climate then this could be one way of making productive use of the time you have available and undertake a training session and as a result enhance your AutoCAD skills.

Please feel free to peruse the list below at your leisure or you can download it here.

Proxy Information

When you open a drawing, the following dialogue box appears: -  

It is possible to stop this dialogue box appearing but it is worth knowing the significance of this message and what problems could it cause.

Substitute text fonts

When you open a drawing, the following message appears on the command line: -  

If the command prompts disappear before there is time to read them, press the function key F2 on the keyboard and the AutoCAD text window will appear.  

The result is that any text in the drawing that was created using the missing text font is substituted by simplex (or a font of your choice) and will probably not fit correctly: -

Missing plotters and plot styles  

Usually with drawings you have received from a third party but possibly also from other peoples drawings created in house you get this annoying message when you try to plot the drawing: -  

This message can be prevented from appearing.

Again, usually with drawings you have received from a third party but possibly also from other peoples drawings created in house you notice that plot styles are missing and the drawing does not print correctly. E.g., yellow objects could print out in yellow rather than black and therefore do not show up properly.

Match Properties

Sometimes, match properties does not appear to work: -

It is usually when you are trying to match text. E.g., you want to change something that is based upon the standard AutoCAD font to something more appealing like Arial but match properties has no impact on it and it remains the same.

Cannot purge everything

A very common question I get asked is why it is not always possible to purge layers, text styles and other items even though they do no appear to exist in a drawing.

You have tried freezing all of the layers apart from layer data, zooming extents and then listing everything displayed and there is nothing there! Layer data still does not purge.

Similarly, you have checked that all of your text was created with a single style (survey notes in the above example) but cannot purge any styles that have not been used (item titles in the above example).

Linetype and hatch pattern scale discrepancies

You create a drawing that includes different linetypes and some hatching: -

On another day in a different drawing, the same linetype scales and hatch pattern scales do not seem to work: -  

The grid lines appear solid and the hatching too close together. This can also happen on another area of the same drawing.

Strange block names

Using the insert command, look at the list of blocks you have in your drawing and see if the list contains any blocks with the name A$Cxxxxxxxx such as these: -

If so, you are creating unnecessarily large drawings that take longer than they should to regenerate and contain many things that cannot be purged.

This list should not really contain any blocks called A$Cxxxxxxxx so it is worth learning how to avoid them.

Cannot change the properties of a block

You find items inserted as blocks on certain layers do not change colour if you change them to a different layer: -

Linetype scaling

One of the most common causes of frustration is understanding how to set the spacing of non-continuous linetypes to make them appear in a neat and tidy way.

One popular way of setting the linetype scale is using the properties palette but this is not the correct way to do it: -

Then there is the problem of spending time to make the drawing appear correctly in model space only for paper space to then display the lines solid or a different scale factor to how they appear in model space: -

Multi line text fonts  

The Standard text style should never be used either: -

Dimension styles