Ghost objects in block editor

[Anonymous]

I have ACADE2014 64 bit on Win7. I have a block that shows 2 little square objects on Layer0. All objects in my block are on various other layers. I am unable to select them with any command. They are outside the actual block that I created. Note that nothing was imported.

If I erase the entire block, the ghosts seem to disappear along with the block. If I erase each piece of the block, they do not disappear despite all parts of the block being erased. With all parts of the block erased, I go to erase all and it finds nothing to erase. Yet the ghosts persist.

Next I locked all layers except layer0 and do an erase. Tells me 0 objects were erased and ghosts persist.

If I copy the block objects, the ghosts are also copied.

In the block editor, I need to be zoomed out and then they appear. Despite them being within the previous zoom range. Which means if they were not ghosts, you would be able to see them in the zoomed in screen.

When the block is inserted to the drawing, again you need to zoom out as in the block editor to see them. Also when you do a zoom all, the extents are extended to include these ghosts which lay outside the drawing border and the drawing limits. However I have to zoom out farther to see the ghosts even though they were in the zoom all screen extents.

Also I have tried selecting all the parts of the block and changed layers which also changed there color. The ghosts seem unaffected by this and turn on and off with turning layer0 on and off.

Can anyone tell me how to get rid of these ghosts? And how they get there so I can prevent it in the future?

[TRLitsey]

Hi there,

Any chance you can post up a .dwg file of the block so we can have a peek at it in the ACE environment?

Good luck

[jseefdrumr]

Type PURGE at the command line. In the dialog that comes up, select 'View items you cannot purge' and then look at the 'blocks' section. Anything unusual there?

Jim

[rhesusminus]

When working with problematic object like this, I tend to use the QSELECT command to see what kind of objects that are available to be selected and on.

If that won't work, I'll write a VBA macro to see what objects that are available in the block.

Also, if we could have a look at the block we could probably help you better.

[jseefdrumr]

Man, I keep forgetting about quick select.

Also, there is SuperPurge...

[Anonymous]

Here is a drawing that I saved zoomed out so you can see the error when you open it.

Not sure what I did, but I exploded the block, selected all the objects in the exploded block (but not the ghosts) and exploded it again. Then I copied the exploded stuff and pasted it on a clean new blank sheet. I then went back to the original, (included here), erased all of the exploded block parts. Then I copied the rest of the border and what was inside the border to the clean sheet with the clean block parts. The ghosts are gone.

Re-assembled the block itself. Still ghost free.

Deleted the old symbol block in my Library and replaced it with the clean symbol block. Inserted that into another new sheet. The ghosts are still gone.

The block I am referring to is marked VFD in the upper left corner of the block. It is the biggest object on the sheet.

[Anonymous]

Hate to say it, but the drawing attached did not have the ghosts when I opened it in 2017 on a different computer.

Now I am really confused as to what they are or where they come from.

[rhesusminus · Accepted solution]

Your block contains a lot of text objects that don't contain any text. A few versions ago AutoCAD suddenly started to take these into consideration when doing a zoom extents....

Here's a video showing how to remove them from within a block (I'm holding down the SHIFT-key to deselect the other text objetcs):

To remove them directly in a drawing, use the -PURGE command to remove zero length geometry an empty text objects.

[Anonymous]

One thing that you need to do is a "Audit", it found 8 errors.

[Anonymous]

Thank you! I did not realize that blank items could exist. Followed this and it cleaned right up.

[Anonymous]

Yes all 8 are simply missing attributes that we do not use in this particular application. And the symbol works fine even with those unneeded "required" attributes not present.

[rhesusminus]

Fun fact: Only the TAG1/2 attribute is required. All other information is saved in XDATA on the object if the attribute is missing.
Type AEXDATA to see the "hidden" information in objects 🙂