You need a note sitting in the middle of a hatched area, or a schedule placed over a floor plan. Erasing the linework damages the drawing; leaving it alone buries the text in a thicket of lines. The wipeout command in AutoCAD does exactly this job: it lays a mask on top, and everything underneath survives untouched, merely hidden.
Everything below was measured on AutoCAD 2027 at the Institute. The focus is the question nearly half the people searching are asking: how to make a round mask, when the command flatly refuses to accept a circle. For the wider subject of drawing presentation, the Institute runs an AutoCAD course for construction.
What masking part of a drawing actually does
A wipeout is not an eraser. It is a real object with its own shape, sitting above other objects in draw order. Nothing beneath it is altered: delete the mask and the linework reappears in full.
The mask takes the colour of the viewport background, so it is black on a black background, white on a white one, and white when plotted onto paper. That is why it blends into the drawing without any adjustment.
Where to start it
Before anything else, the wipeout command in AutoCAD has to be found, and it is not where most people look. The table below was read out of the acad.cuix interface file of the 2027 release on the machine, not written from memory.
| Command | Alias | Ribbon | Classic menu |
|---|---|---|---|
WIPEOUT | none | Annotate → Markup → Wipeout | Draw → Wipeout |
DRAWORDER | DR | Home → Modify → Draw Order | Tools → Draw Order |
TEXTTOFRONT | none | Home → Modify → Draw Order | Tools → Draw Order |
There is no alias, so all seven letters get typed, or the button on the Annotate tab gets pressed. DRAWORDER and TEXTTOFRONT sit next to each other on the ribbon because they solve the problem the wipeout creates, which the last section of this article covers.
Step by step on the command line
The first prompt, copied verbatim from the 2027 release:
Specify first point or [Frames/Polyline] <Polyline>:
Notice the default in the angle brackets is Polyline. The command expects you to point at an existing closed polyline rather than draw the shape freehand.
| Step | What the machine asks, verbatim | What you do |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Command: | Type WIPEOUT and press Enter |
| 2 | Specify first point or [Frames/Polyline] <Polyline>: | Enter for Polyline, or click points to draw one |
| 3 | Select a closed polyline: | Pick the outline you drew earlier |
| 4 | Asks whether to erase the outline | Y to erase it, N to keep it |
Step four is worth a moment's thought. Keeping the outline makes later reshaping easier, but leaves an extra line lying exactly along the mask edge.
The Frames option at step two creates no mask at all; it only turns the border on or off for every mask in the drawing.
Why the command refuses a circle
This is where people give up. Draw a circle, run the command, pick the circle — and the software repeats the same question without accepting it.
Measured on a blank drawing, the result is unambiguous:
| What was offered as the outline | Result |
|---|---|
| A circle | The prompt Select a closed polyline: repeats; not accepted |
| A rectangle (closed polyline) | Accepted immediately |
| A 60-sided polygon | Accepted immediately |
The reason is written in the prompt itself: it wants a closed polyline. A circle in AutoCAD is its own object type, not a polyline, so it is rejected.
What makes this frustrating is that the software reports no error. It simply asks again, and the user assumes they misclicked.
How to make a circular wipeout that works
The answer is in the last row above. A regular polygon is a closed polyline, and with enough sides the eye cannot tell it from a circle.
POLYGON → sides: 60 → pick centre → C (inscribed/circumscribed) → radius
WIPEOUT → Enter → pick the polygon → YSixty sides is what we used for the measurements, and at any normal zoom level on a construction drawing it reads as perfectly round. The practical test is simple: zoom to the scale the sheet will be printed at, and if no flat edge is visible there, none will be visible on paper either. The mask on the right of the opening figure is exactly that: a 60-sided polygon, not a circle.
More sides gives more precision, but each side is a vertex, and a 360-sided mask is six times heavier for no visible gain. Drawing polygons is covered in our article on the polygon command.
There is one other route people try: draw a circle and convert it to a polyline. But PEDIT will not convert a circle, so in practice it comes back to the polygon. Using POLYGON from the start is the tidiest answer.
The border, and the WIPEOUTFRAME variable
By default a mask carries a thin border. On screen that is useful, because it is how you select the mask at all; on paper it is an unwanted line.
Autodesk describes it on the WIPEOUTFRAME page for the 2027 release: "Controls the display of frames for wipeout objects", saved in the drawing, initial value 1.
| Value | What Autodesk says |
|---|---|
| 0 | "Frames are not displayed or plotted" |
| 1 | "Frames are displayed and plotted" — the default |
| 2 | "Frames are displayed, but not plotted" |
The most useful setting is 2: the border stays visible while you work, so masks remain selectable, and disappears on the plot. Very few people know this value exists.
The opening figure is one drawing captured twice with only that variable changed. In the lower half the background lines are cut cleanly to the mask shape with no trace of a border.
There is a trap Autodesk notes on the same page: "The FRAME system variable overrides the WIPEOUTFRAME setting". If changing WIPEOUTFRAME appears to do nothing, check FRAME first.
Because the variable is saved in the drawing, each file carries its own value. Changing it here does not affect another drawing, and a file received from someone else may arrive set differently from your machine.
When a mask swallows your text
This is the commonest accident: you place a mask and the note underneath vanishes with it.
We measured it by counting the bright pixels in the area holding the text, capturing three times:
| Stage | Bright pixels counted |
|---|---|
| Two lines of text, no mask yet | 11,875 |
| After placing the mask on top | 0 |
After typing TEXTTOFRONT | 11,875 |
The count returns to exactly what it was, not a pixel out. The text was never lost; it was merely pushed below in draw order, and TEXTTOFRONT lifts all text back to the top.
To move one object rather than every piece of text, use DRAWORDER, aliased DR. Selecting the mask and sending it to the back produces the same result.
The tidy habit is to place the mask first and write the text afterwards. On a drawing that already carries text, one TEXTTOFRONT after adding a mask settles it. How draw order behaves on the plot is covered in our article on plot styles in AutoCAD.
Three things tutorials leave out
| What people assume | What the 2027 release actually does |
|---|---|
| A wipeout erases what is underneath | It does not. Delete the mask and the linework returns intact |
| A circle can serve as the outline | It cannot. The prompt repeats; use a many-sided polygon |
| Hiding the border means setting 0 | Value 2 is better: visible for selecting, absent from the plot |
The wipeout command in AutoCAD is a simple thing made awkward by two details: it takes only closed polylines, and it sits above everything else in draw order. Understand those two and it behaves.
On construction drawings it earns its place in a handful of recurring situations: a schedule dropped onto a hatched plan, a level marker that has to stay readable over a grid of reinforcement, a detail callout crossing a dense elevation. In each case the alternative is deleting linework you will want back later, which is exactly the habit that damages a drawing set over time.
Frequently asked questions
What is the alias?
There is none. Type WIPEOUT in full, or use the button at Annotate → Markup → Wipeout.
Why will it not take my circle?
It accepts only closed polylines, and a circle is a different object type. Draw a 60-sided polygon with POLYGON instead.
How do I stop the border printing?
Set WIPEOUTFRAME to 2 to keep it on screen only, or to 0 to hide it entirely.
My text disappeared under a mask. How do I get it back?
Type TEXTTOFRONT to lift all text above, or use DR to send the mask to the back.
Does the mask plot white on paper?
Yes. It takes the background colour, so on paper it comes out as a white area.
Can a mask be reshaped after it is placed?
Yes. Select it and the grips at each vertex can be dragged, exactly as on a polyline. This is the reason some people answer N at step four and keep the original outline as well.