Drawing area is blank

[chriscowgill7373]

I cannot do anything in the Autocad or Autocad LT, 2018 or 2019 drawing area.  I can right click and see menus, I can see dynamic input, and I can see the command line and all the toolbars.

I cannot see my cursor or viewcube or existing linework or created linework, it is just black, modelspace and paperspace act the same. 

I am not a Mac user, so I don't know where to check what.  I have tried the various AKN articles, some describe secondary monitor issues, some say reset to defaults, I've reset to default, and I only have one screen, so neither of those options work.  Im 100% positive it is a graphics related issue, but being a windows user, I have no clue where to start.  Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[maxim_k]

Hi Christopher,

Are you using native AutoCAD for Mac?
If yes, please describe Mac model, specify macOS installed on it.
Unfortunately you cannot disable hardware acceleration (use software acceleration) on Mac, so if there are some hardware graphical issues, most likely you can not do anything, but for a start - describe your Mac model in details.

[maxim_k]

The only thing that comes to my mind is to try to set LINESMOOTHING=OFF

Command: LINESMOOTHING
Enter new value for LINESMOOTHING <ON>: OFF
Command:

Then relaunch AutoCAD.

[chriscowgill7373]

Linesmoothing off didnt help.  Its running on a VM, Mojave 10.14.2.  I'm starting to think that the VM isnt passing the proper display information, and AutoCAD doesnt know how to handle it, as you say, I might just be out of luck.

[ChrisPreece]

Hi @chriscowgill7373,

I'm sorry to hear you're having trouble with AutoCAD. Can you provide some more details on your VM setup? If you're able to, can you also post screenshots of the windows produced by the ABOUT and GRAPHICSCONFIG commands? Troubleshooting on a VM can be tricky, but I'll gladly do what I can to help out.

[maxim_k]

Is it VMware Fusion or Parallels Desktop VM? Or maybe Virtual Box?
Do you talk about macOS VM or about Windows VM?
If you are trying to launch AutoCAD for Mac inside VM, then I'm afraid, it is not possible.
If you are about AutoCAD for Windows inside Windows VM, then it should run properly with default settings on VMware and Parallels, I have both and AutoCAD for Windows works fine (better with Parallels Desktop).

[chriscowgill7373]

Yes, sorry.  I'm running VMware Workstation Player 15.  With macOS as the guest OS on a Windows Laptop.

I am indeed trying to run AutoCAD for Mac inside that VM, the only portion not functioning is the drawing space.   Currently I have open AutoCAD 2018.2 O.48.M.563  GRAPHICSCONFIG is only allowing command-line output

[maxim_k]

Are you sure that VMware officially supports macOS virtual machines?
Even it does, AutoCAD for Mac will not run in such virtualization environment.

[chriscowgill7373]

I dont know if they support it or not, everyone does lots of things that may or may not be supported.  I figured it was worth throwing it out there and see if anyone else had tried it.  That is unfortunate that it wont run virtualized.  Its so close too, just the drawing space is all that isnt functioning.

Thanks for your assistance.

[ChrisPreece · Accepted solution]

@chriscowgill7373,

Apologies for the delay. It sounds like this problem is due to an unsupported virtualized environment. If we were somehow able to recreate the issue in a supported (native) environment, then we could likely find a solution. Unfortunately, there's not much that we can troubleshoot here. 

Did you happen to reach out to VMware to see if they have any recommendations?

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