Have You Tried: AutoCAD Cleanup Tools Purge and Overkill

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Have You Tried February Purge Overkill

For the Have You Tried this month, we’re going to take a look at removing unused named objects and overlapping geometry to keep our drawings clean and tidy, and even possibly keep the file size down along the way.

Unused named objects can be block definitions, layers, or linetypes that are no longer used or needed in a drawing. Overlapping geometry is often the result of copying or creating objects on top of each other, and can affect the way your drawing looks, prints, and even potentially lead to mistakes when working in the drawing. AutoCAD has cleanup tools such as PURGE and OVERKILL that remove unused or duplicate items from a drawing and help keep your drawing file clean from clutter.

In this Have You Tried, we’ll go over how to:

  • Purge unused items
  • Find non-purgeable items
  • Delete duplicate and overlapping objects

Learn how to keep your drawing files tidy using the Purge and Overkill features, with the step-by-step examples in the Have You Tried: Purge and Overkill topic.

Have You Tried AutoCAD Purge

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Lee Ambrosius

Lee Ambrosius is a Principal Learning Content Developer at Autodesk, Inc., for the AutoCAD software and AutoCAD LT software products. He works primarily on the CAD administration, customization, and developer documentation. Lee has also worked on the user documentation for AutoCAD on Windows and Mac. He has presented on a wide range of topics at Autodesk University over the past 10 years, from general AutoCAD customization to ObjectARX technology. Lee has authored a number of AutoCAD-related books, with his most recent projects being AutoCAD Platform Customization: User Interface, AutoLISP, VBA, and Beyond and AutoCAD 2015 and AutoCAD LT 2015 Bible. When he’s not writing, you can find him roaming various community forums, posting articles on his blog, or tweeting AutoCAD-related information.

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