topic Re: Cant publish in background in AutoCAD Forum

Cant publish in background

maryhanley — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 17:21:19 GMT

I have used batch plot or publish to pdf from this drawing before without issue, but recently it is not working. it produces nothing if I select publish in background, but it works ok if I select open in viewer when done. The background plot is set to 0. I did upgrade to 2026 recently, this is likely first time using publish since. I've tried it with different drivers selected , still no change.

Re: Cant publish in background

imadHabash — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 17:52:40 GMT

Hi,

Set BGCOREPUBLISH (System Variable) = 1 .
Set PUBLISHCOLLATE (System Variable) = 1 .
Read and follow this official LINK .
try to restart AutoCAD after that.

Re: Cant publish in background

pendean — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 20:56:46 GMT

@maryhanley wrote:
...produces nothing if I select publish in background...

Sometime that just stops working for a user and there is no getting it back. Use the free DWGTRUEVIEW app for all of your publishing needs while you continue to work in your AutoCAD session is a popular solution.

Re: Cant publish in background

BhaskarMurari — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 11:01:15 GMT

1.Turn off background plotting/publishing by ensuring BACKGROUNDPLOT is set to 0.
2. Reset AutoCAD to default settings.
3. Check if the file name contains special characters like an apostrophe, as this can prevent PDF creation.

Re: Cant publish in background

maryhanley — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 17:50:14 GMT

none of these settings worked at the time, even with several re-starts.

But a few days later publish in background started working again.

now it is working with backgroundplot set to 2. and bgcorepublish is off.

go figure.

Re: Cant publish in background

Ed__Jobe — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 01:51:59 GMT

@maryhanley I would use acCoreConsole.exe. See this post. You can publish a whole folder to pdf by right clicking in Windows Explorer and selecting the command. It's super quick because all the files plot in parallel, not sequentially.