Viewport turns black, can enter model space and select, plots correctly

[Anonymous]

I've been runing LT 2013 for the past couple of months, everything was working fine until recently.  Occasionally a viewport will go completely black.  I can doule-click into model space and select objects, though I can't really see them.  If I delete the viewport and make a new one, the new one works fine (at least for now).  Everything plots just fine.  Restarting AutoCAD doesn't help.

Could this be a video card/driver error?

[pendean]

>>>...GOES BLACK...>>> as in you activate VPMAX command? or just being inside the viewport while in paperspace? These are two different functions.

[Anonymous]

Nope, I don't activate VPMAX.  If I'm in a layout tab, sometimes one of the viewports is just...black. The background in the other viewports is white, like normal.  It doesn't happen in all tabs, but if it does, it happens upon switching to that tab. It doesn't just spontaneously turn black in front of my eyes while I'm in a layout. 

[pendean · Accepted solution]

That is unusual: anything driver updates or upgrades to the Vid card, or Windows display settings changes?

Toggle hardware acceleration in LT2013, see if that helps.

Autodesk Supported Graphics Cards List and drivers:
http://www.autodesk.com/autocad-graphicscard

[Anonymous]

Turns out the vid card is not on the certified list for Autocad.  I turned OFF hardware acceleration and that seems to be doing the trick.  Next step is to get IT to upggrade the vid card.  Thanks for the help!

[Anonymous]

We've just encountered this on AutoCAD 2015, and it is drawing based as the error can be saved and loaded on another machine. Any ideas? Regen, turning viewports on and off does not help. Bizarrely turning off hardware acceleration when these drawings are open makes the viewports back to normal but the card is supported by Autodesk and this only happens on some drawings. Blindly doubled clicking in viewport and editing the xref makes the drawing appear but inverted as if in model space! VPMAX shows drawing! Help!

[Anonymous]

Solved, we had images in the drawing that caused this!

[Anonymous]

This black paper space happened to me randomly. VPMax followed by VPMin fixed it for me. Similar to how hovering over the wireframe symbol in top left of window will bring back you cursor when it randomly disappears. 

[cljones300]

VPMAX and then VPMIN also solved it for me. Except I type VPMAX and then PS which is much less time consuming.