How to Use Fill Mode

Quick answer: FILL toggles whether filled and hatched areas actually display filled in, affecting wide polylines, traces, solids, and hatches (including solid-fill). It works by toggling the FILLMODE system variable, and needs a REGEN or REGENALL afterward to actually take visible effect.

What Fill Mode Affects

Wide polylines, donuts, traces, and planes (solids) all display differently depending on the setting: filled in, or shown as outlines only.

Turning Fill Mode Off: A Performance Benefit

With FILLMODE off, every filled entity displays and prints as an outline instead, which reduces how long a drawing takes to display or print, useful on complex drawings where filled areas are slowing things down.

Setting Fill Mode

Either run FILL directly, or set the FILLMODE system variable yourself. Either way, run REGEN or REGENALL afterward, the change won’t actually show up on screen until the viewport regenerates.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why doesn’t toggling FILL change anything on screen right away? It needs a regeneration to take effect. Run REGEN for the current viewport, or REGENALL for all of them.

What entity types does Fill mode actually affect? Wide polylines, donuts, traces, and planes (solids), including solid-fill hatches.

Why would I want to turn Fill mode off? It’s a performance option, turning it off displays and prints filled entities as outlines only, which reduces the time it takes to display or print a drawing.

Is there a difference between running FILL and setting FILLMODE directly? No, FILL simply toggles the FILLMODE system variable, so both approaches do the same thing.