AutoCAD 2016: Properties Palette blank or shows no selection

By Justin Doughty 

When something we use every day stops working, it can become very frustrating. One of the most common tools in AutoCAD is the Properties Palette. Sometimes when a group of elements are selected, this can incorrectly show “No Selection” or appear blank:

Below I have put together a troubleshooting guide on this issue, with some suggestions to check.

The first thing we should check is the just the drop down of the selection, selecting one category will give you more properties than “All”:

If the properties palette shows “No selection” when selected objects are panned or zoomed out of view, try changing the variable HPMAXAREAS to 0:

This value is set by default to 100 and has a maximum of 10,000,000. This issue is usually due to dense hatch patterns in the drawing.

If the properties selection shows “No selection” and is blank, try changing the variable PROPOBJLIMIT to 0:

This value is set by default to 25000 and has a maximum of 32767. Settings this to 0 removes the limitation, but will affect performance. Return this to a sensible value once the issue is resolved. 

For those that use the properties panel in the Ribbon there is also the variable RIBBONCONTEXTSELLIM:

If the properties selection is lost when you start a command, set the variable PICKFIRST to 1:

Finally, if the problem is still present, it may be more severe. Autodesk have the following article on this:

Properties-palette-is-blank-and-does-not-work-in-AutoCAD