AutoCAD Wipeout Command: Create, Hide and Fix Wipeouts
The WIPEOUT command in AutoCAD draws a polygonal area that hides whatever sits beneath it, so text, symbols and detail can be read without trimming or deleting the linework behind them. Type WIPEOUT, click the corners of the area you want to mask, press Enter, then control the border with the Frames option. This guide covers the full routine: drawing a wipeout, building one from a polyline, faking a circle, hiding the frame, fixing draw order and avoiding the mistakes that make wipeouts misbehave on a live project.
TL;DR
WIPEOUT creates a polygonal mask that covers underlying objects with the current background color, and the geometry underneath stays intact.
Draw it by picking points, or choose the Polyline option to convert a closed, straight-segment polyline into a wipeout.
Use the Frames option (ON, OFF, or Display but not plot) to control the border. Hiding the frame does not change the masking.
A wipeout only hides objects below it in draw order. Fix a “not working” wipeout with DRAWORDER first.
True curves are not supported. A polygon with many sides gives a circular-looking result.
Table of Contents
What the wipeout actually does
A wipeout is an object in its own right, not a hatch and not a trim. Autodesk’s documentation describes it as a polygonal area that masks underlying objects with the current background color, bounded by a frame that you can show or hide. Because it matches the drawing window background, the objects below look as though they have been removed, yet nothing underneath is trimmed. Move or delete the wipeout and the linework is still there.
The technical reference goes one step further: a wipeout is a masking object that hides things below it in the current draw order and is built as a polygonally clipped raster entity. You do not need the programming detail, but two practical points follow from it. First, a wipeout is a real object that you can select, move, copy and put on a layer. Second, anything above it in draw order is not hidden, which explains most support questions on the subject.
Autodesk’s own blog frames wipeouts and masks as readability tools: they cut visual clutter where geometry and annotation overlap. That is the right mental model. A wipeout is for the reader of the drawing, not for the geometry.
When a wipeout is the right tool
Text or dimensions that must sit on top of hatching, grid lines or dense detail.
A symbol or callout that crosses lines you cannot trim, such as a keynote bubble over a gridline.
Covering part of a drawing temporarily during markup, so the content can be revealed later.
A title block note or revision cloud area that needs a clean background.
When it is not
If the underlying geometry should genuinely not exist, trim or erase it. A wipeout over linework that should be gone is a drawing standards problem waiting to happen: the next person who moves the mask finds a surprise underneath. Our notes on AutoCAD drawing standards explain where that line sits in an office.
How to create a wipeout, step by step
The command is available by typing WIPEOUT at the command line, or from the Draw panel on the Home tab in most workspaces. On Mac, the LT guide points to Draw > Wipeout.
Start the command with WIPEOUT.
At the prompt, pick the first point of the area you want to cover.
Pick each further corner. Work around the perimeter in order, in one direction.
Press Enter to finish. The wipeout closes itself and masks everything below it.
If the wrong objects are still showing, check draw order (see below).
Turn on Object Snap and, for rectangular areas, Ortho or Polar Tracking. Pick points a little outside the object you are protecting. A tight wipeout around text leaves letters touching the line work; a margin of one or two text heights usually reads cleaner. That margin is a drafting habit rather than a rule, so match your office standard.
Point order matters
Autodesk warns that the order in which you specify points affects the outer edge and masked area. If you jump across the shape, you can end up with a rectangle instead of the bow-tie or hourglass you wanted. When a result looks strange, undo and re-pick the corners walking round the outline rather than criss-crossing it.
Making a wipeout from a polyline
Picking points is quick for a box, but for anything you may need to adjust, a polyline is more controllable. The WIPEOUT command has a Polyline option: you choose Polyline and select a polyline, then decide whether to erase or keep the source polyline.
The workflow Autodesk Support recommends is straightforward: draw a polyline around the area to cover, run WIPEOUT, choose Polyline and select it. The polyline has rules:
It must be closed.
It must consist only of line segments, so no curves (arc segments will be refused).
It must have zero width, as the LT for Mac guide states.
If the command rejects your polyline, one of these three is almost always the reason. Check for arc segments, an open end, or a global width above zero in the Properties palette.
Erase or keep the source polyline?
Keep it when the boundary might change. Edit the polyline with grips or PEDIT, then run WIPEOUT again and delete the old mask. Erase it when the mask is final and you do not want extra objects cluttering the drawing. If you keep it, put it on its own layer so it can be frozen or set not to plot.
Circular and other curved wipeouts
This is the question behind several of the pages that rank for this topic. The answer: wipeouts do not support true curves. Autodesk’s approach is to create a polygon with many sides, with 32 as its example, then convert that closed polygon with the Polyline option. Retain the polygon if you want an editable boundary.
A step-by-step version:
Run POLYGON and enter the number of sides. Use 32 as Autodesk does, or more for large circles that will be printed big.
Choose the center and the radius. Inscribed or circumscribed both work. Circumscribed keeps the mask outside the circle you are covering, which is usually what you want for a bubble or a column.
Run WIPEOUT, choose Polyline, select the polygon, and answer the erase prompt.
Check the plotted result at print scale. If you can see facets, rebuild with more sides.
The same approach works for ovals, cloud shapes and any outline you can approximate with short straight segments. More sides gives a smoother edge, at the cost of a slightly heavier object. For a handful of callouts that cost is irrelevant.
Show, hide or remove the wipeout frame
By default a wipeout shows a visible border. That helps while you are drawing because you can see and select it, but you rarely want it on a finished sheet. The question of how to remove the border comes up constantly, and the answer is the Frames option inside the command: ON displays and plots frames, OFF displays and plots none, and Display but not plot shows them on screen without plotting.
Frames option | On screen | On the plot |
ON | Visible | Printed |
OFF | Hidden | Not printed |
Display but not plot | Visible | Not printed |
For day-to-day drafting, Display but not plot is a good working setting: you can still see and pick the frames while building the drawing, and they will not appear on the sheet. Turn Frames OFF when you want a clean screen for final checking or when you are sending a file that others will view in model space.
The masking is not affected by any of these choices. The area still hides what is beneath it; only the border line changes.
The system variables behind it
Three variables matter here. Autodesk lists FRAME as controlling frames for images, underlays, clipped xrefs and wipeouts, FRAMESELECTION as deciding whether hidden frames can be selected, and WIPEOUTFRAME as controlling wipeout frame display. The documented defaults are 3, 1 and 1 respectively.
In practice: if you hide the frames and then cannot click a wipeout to move or delete it, FRAMESELECTION is the setting to look at. If hiding the frame for wipeouts also changes the borders of images or clipped xrefs in your file, that is FRAME at work, since it covers all of those object types at once.
Draw order: why a wipeout “doesn’t work”
The most common complaint is a wipeout that seems to do nothing. In nearly every case it is sitting below the objects you want to hide. A wipeout obscures only objects beneath it in draw order, so you adjust it with DRAWORDER.
The usual sequence for a callout over hatch is:
Draw the wipeout.
Use DRAWORDER to bring the wipeout to the front, or send the hatch to the back.
Bring the text or symbol above the wipeout, so only the linework is masked and the annotation stays visible.
The third step is the one people forget. If you bring the wipeout to the very front, it hides your own text too. Text goes on top of the wipeout, wipeout on top of the linework. Working the order from the bottom up, in that sequence, solves most cases.
Hatches are a special annoyance, because they can regenerate in a different order after edits. If a mask keeps losing to a hatch, send hatches to the back as a standing habit in your template. Several of the issues in our list of common AutoCAD drafting mistakes trace back to draw order, not to the tool at hand.
Wipeouts inside blocks
Wipeouts can be created directly in a drawing or included in a block, where they mask geometry that passes through a symbol without trimming it. Autodesk suggests grouping the wipeout with the symbol or adding it to the symbol’s block so the pair is easier to handle.
This is the cleanest way to use them for repeating items such as grid bubbles, level markers, tags and door numbers. Build the wipeout into the block definition once, and every instance masks its own background wherever you insert it. You never have to remember to draw a mask by hand again.
A few habits make block-based wipeouts reliable:
Keep the wipeout inside the block slightly larger than the text or graphic it protects.
Order objects inside the block definition: wipeout first, then the graphics and attributes above it.
Test the block over a busy hatch before rolling it into a library.
How blocks are stored and shared matters too, so see our trainer notes on BLOCK versus WBLOCK when you are building a library. If the symbols scale with the viewport, set up annotation scaling first, as described in our annotative scaling guide.
Practical uses on real drawings
Keynotes and tags over hatch. A tag with a wipeout behind it stays legible over a dense pattern, without breaking the hatch into pieces.
Dimension text. If a dimension string crosses a gridline or centerline, a mask is faster than editing the line. Use it sparingly: too many masks make a drawing hard to edit.
Markup and review. Masks are handy for blanking an area of a sheet during review. Keep the markup masks on a dedicated layer so you can switch them off in one move.
Coordinated services drawings. On sheets where ducts, pipes and trays cross each other, masking is one of the ways to keep crossings readable. If you work on multi-discipline sets, it is worth seeing how teams approach coordinating MEP drawings for construction, and then deciding where a wipeout helps and where proper layering does the job better.
Teaching and standards drawings. For learning exercises, a mask lets you hide part of a detail and reveal it later, which is useful for quizzes or step-by-step sheets.
Troubleshooting checklist
Symptom | Likely cause | Fix |
Wipeout does nothing | It is below the objects in draw order | Use DRAWORDER to bring it to the front |
Text disappears too | Wipeout is above the text | Bring the text above the wipeout |
Polyline option refuses the object | Polyline is open, has arcs or has width | Close it, convert arcs to short segments, set width to 0 |
Can’t click the wipeout | Frames are hidden | Check Frames and the FRAMESELECTION variable |
Border prints on the sheet | Frames set to ON | Set Frames to OFF, or Display but not plot |
Odd rectangle instead of the shape you wanted | Points picked out of order | Undo and pick around the outline in sequence |
Edges look faceted | Too few polygon sides | Rebuild the polygon with more sides |
Keep your files lean
Wipeouts are lightweight, but a drawing that has been copied between projects for years can pick up hundreds of orphaned masks. Select them with a filter, put them on a named layer, and audit. Our five step purge workflow shows how to clean a DWG safely before issuing it.
Our perspective: treat the wipeout as a finishing tool
We teach AutoCAD to architects, technicians and students, and the wipeout is one of the commands where we see habits split the neat drawings from the messy ones. Our view is simple. A wipeout should be the last thing you add, not the first thing you reach for.
First get the geometry right: correct layers, correct line types, sensible hatch boundaries. Then use masks where the reader of the sheet needs help, and no more. When a student has fifteen masks on a plan, there is usually an underlying problem such as a poor hatch boundary or text that should have been placed differently.
We also push people to put wipeouts inside blocks. A tag block with its mask built in behaves the same on every sheet, and nobody has to think about it. And always set the frame behavior deliberately. Display but not plot is the setting we recommend while drafting, because it avoids the classic surprise of a border showing up on a printed set.
Finally, learn draw order properly. Half of the questions we get about wipeouts are really questions about DRAWORDER, and ten minutes on that command saves hours later.
— Steve
Learn AutoCAD properly, not command by command
The wipeout is a small command, but it sits on top of larger habits: layers, blocks, scaling and clean sheet setup. Our AutoCAD Training course takes you from beginner to expert through project-based lessons built around real drawing workflows, at €79 one-off. It includes direct trainer support and lifetime access to the materials, and completion certificates are included.
If you are earlier in your journey and still choosing between the two main Autodesk tools for architecture, the same approach applies to Revit, and you can see the options on our Revit course page. If you are also setting up a drawing template, our architectural drawing setup guide is a sensible next read.
FAQ
What is a wipeout in AutoCAD?
A wipeout is a polygonal area that masks objects beneath it using the current background color. It has a frame that can be displayed or hidden. The hidden objects are not trimmed or deleted, so they reappear if you move or erase the wipeout.
How do I remove the border from a wipeout?
Run WIPEOUT, choose the Frames option and set it to OFF. That hides and stops plotting the frames. If you want to see them on screen while working but keep them off the printed sheet, choose Display but not plot. The masking effect is the same either way.
Can I make a circular wipeout?
Not as a true curve. Draw a polygon with many sides, Autodesk’s example uses 32, then run WIPEOUT and choose Polyline to convert it. Keep the polygon if you want to edit the boundary later. Add more sides if the edge looks faceted on the plot.
Why isn’t my wipeout hiding anything?
It is almost certainly below the objects in draw order. A wipeout only hides what is beneath it, so use DRAWORDER to bring it to the front. Then place your text or symbol above the wipeout so that it stays visible.
Why does AutoCAD reject my polyline when I choose the Polyline option?
The polyline must be closed, made only of straight line segments and have zero width. Check for arc segments or a width value in the Properties palette. Fix those and the conversion will work.
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