Menu and palette text scales or displays incorrectly in AutoCAD or dialogs not showing

Autodesk Support

Mar 14, 2025

Products and versions covered

Issue:

When viewing text in the ribbon, menus, dialog windows, and palettes within AutoCAD products, the text is larger (usually) than expected, often blanking out fields and obscuring other elements.

Causes:

  • Using high resolution screens causes icons, menus, etc. within applications and within the operating system itself to be small. 
  • To compensate for this, display scaling can be increased within Display Settings in Windows (Windows 10 tends to increase scaling by default).
  • Programs that are not designed to accommodate display scaling will have user interface (UI) elements skewed or out of proportion.
  • The most noticeable effect of this is UI text not fitting into the places it was meant to show. 
  • Text will not size correctly, will look oddly matched with the rest of the UI, and may even show that text characters are scaled up to where they will not fit at all.
  • AutoCAD versions 2017 and earlier, and several current AutoCAD vertical products (releases 2018 and 2019) are not designed for display scaling. Optimized for screen resolutions less than 2000 dpi.
  • All core UI features in AutoCAD 2018 and newer (in all AutoCAD products) can adapt to display scaling. Specialized AutoCAD-vertical-specific features may still not scale properly (such as those in AutoCAD Map 3D, Plant 3D, and Civil 3D).
  • When using a 4K monitor, in case of inability to adjust resolution and scale of Windows OS due to graphics driver corruption.
  • When the monitor screen scale is set to 150%.

Solution:

Windows 10 or 11

  • Change display scaling to 100%.
    1. In the Start menu, search for display(or display settings).
    2. Move the slider to 100% or select "Smaller - 100%" and click Apply.
    3. Log out and then back into Windows.
  • Lower the screen resolution.
    1. In the Start menu, search for display(or display settings).
    2. Click Advanced Display Settings.
    3. Select a resolution close to 2000 dpi.
  • Revert the advanced Windows display settings.
    1. In the Start menu, search for display (or display settings). For Windows 7, right-click the desktop and go to Personalize > Window Colors > Advanced appearance settings.
    2. Click each menu item and make sure that the font size is 9 with no bold selected.
  • Disable AutoCAD DPI scaling.
    1. Right-click the AutoCAD shortcut or the acad.exe program file and choose Properties.
    2. Under the Compatibility tab, enable one of these options.
      1. Enable Disable Display Scaling On High DPI.
      2. Click "Change high DPI settings" and then enable Override high DPI scaling behavior. Scaling performed by: System.

MacOS

  1. From the Apple menu, choose System Preferences.
  2. Click Displays.
  3. Set Resolution to "Scaled."
  4. Select a resolution close to 2000 dpi.

Products:

AutoCAD for Mac; AutoCAD LT for Mac; AutoCAD Products;

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