No Selection showing in Properties tab
@kcameronJVGPV wrote:There are a couple of unrelated issues that have been mentioned in this thread. One has to do with the number of items you select. The article mentioned in post #62 describes it. The "Object limit for Properties palette" can be changed in the options, or by PROPOBJLIMIT.
This issue that I worked with Autodesk on, and described in detail in post #47 of this thread is unrelated to how many objects are selected. The bugs I specifically talk about in that post were acknowledged by Autodesk, and fixed. They are very consistent and repeatable. The first is related to the Properties palette, and was fixed in AutoCAD 2023. The second is related to the right-click context menu in Plant 3D, and was fixed in Plant 3D version 2024.1. Both issues are symptoms of the same hard-coded limit, which still exists in AutoCAD 2026, and which I can illustrate relatively easily.
That message is produced by a LISP routine I wrote specifically to illustrate the bug. Note that the problem is with the number of selection SETS, not the number of objects selected. A user can only ever have ONE selection set at a time. It might be one object or 25,000 objects, it's still only one set. The limit for open sets is 128. This limit is not a bug, it's just a limit, and any program that tries to assign more than that will throw the "exceeded maximum number of selection sets" error. Depending on how the program is written, the user may not see the actual error message.
Once this occurs, when you try to select one or more objects, they will appear to be selected, and will have grips, but you won't be able to do anything with the selection, and the Properties palette will say nothing is selected.
This screen shot is from Plant 3D 2026.
Autodesk has fixed the bug with the Properties Palette, and with the Plant 3D context menu, but I believe some of the Express Tools might still have issues.
Note that open selection sets are released when a drawing containing them is closed. The limit applies to each instance of AutoCAD that's running. If you have 10 documents open in an instance of AutoCAD, they share the 128 available sets. If you run into this specific bug, you don't need to restart AutoCAD, you just need to close and reopen your drawings.
To reproduce this error, see my post #47.
(gc) would also work
@DGCSCAD - You're partly correct. Sometime this might work, but for me it didn't. If you run into a situation where you have something selected, and the Properties Palettes says nothing is selected, this would definitely be the first thing to try.
In my cases, however, (gc) did't work. In the two specific bugs I reported to Autodesk that they fixed, it didn't help. In some situations, yes, it cleans up garbage and deletes selections sets that have been released, but if the offending code doesn't actually release the selection sets, (gc) won't help.
I just confirmed this for myself with Plant 3D 2023, just to make sure. If you want to try it for yourself, it only takes a minute or two. With Plant 3D 2024.0 or earlier (it was fixed in 2024.1), create a new drawing. Draw anything, a circle for example. Select the circle. Making sure that the circle stays selected, right-click anywhere. When the context menu appears, hit ESC. Right-click anywhere. Hit ESC. Repeat 126 more times (total of 128) or more. Now the Properties Palette still says the circle is selected, but ESC won't deselect it, and as soon as you do anything to change the selection (shift-click it, or click something else), you'll find the Properties Palette now says "No selection." Enter (gc) at the command prompt. The problem persists. I'd be very interested to know if you (or anyone) can repeat these steps and produce a different outcome. If you don't have Plant 3D, but have AutoCAD 2022 or earlier, see my post #47 to reproduce this bug using the Properties Palette.
