Zoom Extents shows a blank drawing or too much empty space in AutoCAD Products and Vault Preview

Autodesk Support

Dec 20, 2024

Products and versions covered

Issue:

When zooming to extents in AutoCAD Products, the content of a drawing disappears, reduces to small dots, or shows unexpected empty space in and around the drawing. This can be seen in model space or in a viewport. 

In the preview in Vault created from the visualization/DWF file the preview is very small

Vault preview with miniaturized view

Causes:

  • Some content has been placed a great distance from the rest of the drawing.
  • Zoom extents is set in publish options in Vault

Solution:

Perform one or more of the following:

  • Ungroup everything in the drawing (for example, select all and then UNGROUP). Zoom to extent and then delete miscellaneous arcs throughout the drawing.

  • Select all in the drawing and then hold the shift key down while drawing a window selection around desired geometry. Hit the Delete key to remove the extraneous elements, leaving only what is desired.

  • Use the ERASE command, enter ALL, then shift-window-deselect the objects to keep, and press Enter to finish the command.

  • Draw a window selection around visible geometry and then copy-paste this to a new file (use Paste to Original Coordinates). Delete the contents of the original file and then copy and paste the elements back into it.

  • Check for objects on layers that are turned off that could be interfering with the calculation of the extent. Freeze these layers instead of turning them off.

  • Edit blocks to look for elements at extreme distances. Delete them and resave the block.

  • Make sure that the drawing does not contain hidden entities that might be causing the problem. Text objects that contain no text may be at fault. To remove the objects, use the QTEXT command to make the border of the blank text objects visible. The AUDIT command can also help with finding hidden entities, such as single vertex polylines.

  • Switch from a layout tab to the model tab and back, and then use the PAGESETUP command. This forces regeneration of the drawing that might fix the issues.

  • Enter the following LISP code on the command line in AutoCAD to reset the TREEDEPTH system variable:

(setvar "treedepth" (getvar "treedepth"))

  • Zoom to All and check for outlying geometry.

  • If the drawing elements are close to a specific point (for example, 0,0,0), export them as a block.

    1. On the affected drawing, enter ZOOM.

    2. Type C and press Enter.

    3. Enter the point coordinates (for example, 0,0) and press Enter.

    4. Enter the height magnification (in drawing units) based on the drawing extension. If unsure, try different amounts (like 10, 100, 1000) (see ZOOM (Command)).

    5. Turn on, thaw, and unlock all layers.

    6. Select the desired geometry with the cursor using a window selection.

    7. Enter WBLOCK and export the selection to a new drawing.

Products:

AutoCAD Products;

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