You are halfway through editing a drawing when the Properties palette in AutoCAD disappears. You click around for a while, fail to find it, and end up doing everything by command. This is common enough to be one of the most asked questions in AutoCAD.
The good news is that bringing it back is quick, and this article measures every route on AutoCAD 2027 at the Institute. For the full set of editing tools see our AutoCAD for Construction course.
How to open the palette: six aliases and one key
Read straight out of the acad.cuix interface file of the 2027 release on the machine, and the count surprised us.
| Command | Alias | Classic menu | Toolbar |
|---|---|---|---|
PROPERTIES | CH, DDCHPROP, DDMODIFY, MO, PR, PROPS | Modify → Properties | Standard Annotation → Properties |
PROPERTIESCLOSE | PRCLOSE | Tools → Palettes → Properties | Standard Annotation → Properties |
Six aliases all open the same palette. That is a legacy of many AutoCAD generations: DDMODIFY and DDCHPROP come from the old dialog era, while CH, MO, PR and PROPS are habits people typed their way into. Any of them works.
Quickest of all is Ctrl+1. We checked it on the machine: close the palette, screenshot to prove it is shut, press Ctrl+1, screenshot again — and the palette is there, as in the picture at the top of this article.
Worth noting: PROPERTIES has no ribbon button. Click users have to go to Modify → Properties in the classic menu, or remember the keystroke.
What is inside it, read off a real line
Autodesk describes the command in five words on its PROPERTIES (Command) page for the 2027 release: "Controls properties of existing objects". The picture above says rather more.
The palette has three groups. General holds what you reach for most: colour, layer, linetype, linetype scale, plot style, lineweight, transparency, hyperlink and thickness. 3D Visualization holds only the material. Geometry holds coordinates and sizes.
One thing people overlook: the Geometry fields hand you measurements for free. The line in the picture has Delta X of 2600 and Delta Y of 900, and the palette reports a Length of 2751.36 and an Angle of 19.0935.
Check it by hand: the square root of 2600 squared plus 900 squared is exactly 2751.36. So selecting a line and pressing Ctrl+1 tells you its length without any measuring command at all.
Fields in black type can be edited; fields in grey are read-only. Change one in the properties palette in AutoCAD and the object changes at once, with no command and no Enter to confirm.
When the palette goes missing: four causes
We built a way to tell for certain whether the palette is open: count the proportion of bright pixels in the left-hand column of the screen.
| State | Measured proportion of bright pixels |
|---|---|
| Palette closed | 0.0049 |
| Palette open | 0.0469 |
| Closed again | 0.0049 |
Nearly a tenfold difference, so the detector is reliable enough to test the remedies with.
The first and commonest cause: it was closed. Perhaps you caught the cross in the corner, or typed PRCLOSE by accident. Press Ctrl+1.
The second: it is on auto-hide. It rolls up into a thin vertical strip at the edge of the screen and only unfurls when the pointer touches it. Plenty of people take that for gone. Right-click the strip and untick Auto-hide.
The third: it was dragged onto a second monitor that has since been unplugged. AutoCAD still remembers the coordinates and draws it off-screen. Type PRCLOSE then Ctrl+1 and it comes home.
The fourth: you are in a different workspace. Each workspace remembers its own arrangement of palettes.
Here a common piece of advice deserves a test. Many guides suggest resetting the workspace to get the palette back. We did exactly that: closed the palette, then set WSCURRENT to the name of the workspace already in use. The bright-pixel proportion stayed at 0.0049, meaning the palette did not come back. That route does not fix a palette that was simply closed.
An empty properties palette, with two measurable causes
This is a different complaint entirely, and both causes can be measured. The palette is open, it simply has nothing to show, which reads as a fault when it is not one.
The first: too many objects selected. The PROPOBJLIMIT variable sets that threshold, and on the machine it reads 25,000. Select more than that and the palette stops listing so the program does not stall. Infrastructure drawings and survey plans reach it easily.
The second: objects of different kinds selected together. Autodesk notes on the same page: "When more than one object is selected, only those properties common to all selected objects are displayed". Select lines together with text and the common ground is a handful of General rows, which looks like a broken palette.
The remedy is the same for both: filter before selecting. Use QSELECT at Home → Utilities → Quick Select to take exactly one kind of object, then open the palette.
For editing many objects of one kind, it is tidier to put them on their own layer and change the layer instead. That is covered in our article on layers in AutoCAD. For getting line widths right on paper, see our article on plot styles.
Copying properties between objects in one command
When one object has to be made just like another, there is no need to edit field by field. The MATCHPROP command, aliased MA or PAINTER, sits at Home → Properties → Match Properties.
What makes it pleasant is that it prints the list of what it is about to copy, right on the command line. Copied verbatim from the 2027 release:
Current active settings: Color Layer Ltype Ltscale Lineweight Transparency Thickness PlotStyle Dim Text Hatch Polyline Viewport Table Material Multileader Center objectSeventeen properties. Read that line once and you know what you are about to copy.
The sequence is short:
| Step | What the program asks | What you do |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Select source object: | Click the object to copy from |
| 2 | Select destination object(s) or [Settings]: | Click the objects to change, then Enter |
We measured it on two lines: a red one as source, a green one as destination. The colour code read 3 before the command and 1 afterwards, exactly as expected.
The Settings option at step 2 lets you untick individual properties. Handy when you want the layer copied but the colour left alone.
Turning quick properties off when it gets in the way
This is a different palette, and a great many guides confuse it with the Properties palette. Quick Properties is the small box that pops up beside the cursor whenever you select something.
Its command is QUICKPROPERTIES, aliased QP, and its switch is the QPMODE variable. Measured on the machine it currently reads -1, meaning off but remembering the last setting.
QPMODE value | Meaning |
|---|---|
0 | off |
1 | on for every object |
2 | on only for the object types listed in the settings |
-1 | off, but remembering the last positive value |
To switch it off, type QPMODE, press Enter, type 0, press Enter. For finer control type DS to open Drafting Settings at Tools → Drafting Settings and use the Quick Properties tab.
Remember that the two are independent. Turning Quick Properties off does nothing to the Properties palette, and the reverse is equally true.
Three things people say that are not true
| What people say | What the 2027 release actually does |
|---|---|
| Reset the workspace and the palette comes back | We tried it and measured: it does not. Use Ctrl+1 or PROPERTIES |
QPMODE is the switch for the Properties palette | It is not. QPMODE only governs Quick Properties, the small box beside the cursor |
| An empty palette means a broken installation | Usually it means more than 25,000 objects selected, or a mixed selection showing only common ground |
The properties palette in AutoCAD, put simply, is where you see and change everything about an object without remembering a single command. It only takes one keystroke to call it back, and knowing which of the four causes above applies saves the ten minutes most people lose hunting through menus for it.
Frequently asked questions
What is the keyboard shortcut?
Ctrl+1. Or type any of the six aliases: CH, MO, PR, PROPS, DDMODIFY, DDCHPROP.
What if it has vanished completely?
Type PRCLOSE and then Ctrl+1. That brings it back to the main screen even when it was sitting on a second monitor that is no longer connected.
Why does selecting the whole drawing show nothing?
You may be over the PROPOBJLIMIT threshold, measured here at 25,000 objects. Or the selection mixes object types, leaving only the common properties.
What is the quickest way to read the length of a line?
Select it and press Ctrl+1, then read the Length field under Geometry. Quicker than any measuring command.
How do I make one object match another?
Type MA, click the source, then click the objects to change. Use the Settings option to be selective.
A small box keeps popping up when I select things.
That is Quick Properties. Type QPMODE and enter 0. The main palette carries on as normal.