Topic: Error message: 'error: Automation Error. Object was erased'

[Matt__W]

So one of the users here is getting an error message I've never seen before.

error: Automation Error. Object was erased

What does it mean and what was erased??

[ronjonp]

Do you have stuff running in startup? I've seen this happen when unlocking all locked layers...purging the drawing..then trying to relock the layer list. One of the layers in the list gets purged and the routine bombs.

[Matt__W]

I have an ACAD.lsp that sets some sysvars, loads an updating program, loads another LSP to clean out junk files (.err, .dmp, .tmp) from the drawing's active directory, and loads a reactor for putting xrefs on a particular layer.

The user got the error message after AutoCAD was already opened.  He clicked on an icon and that message showed up at the command line.  He closed AutoCAD and the message came up again - it doesn't appear to have done anything harmful.

[T.Willey]

It usually means the object that is trying to be modified has been erased, be it layer, line, arc, or whatever.  You could put a check into the code to make sure the item isn't erased 'vlax-erased-p' so that you won't get the error.  You can define a global error handler with '(vl-bt)' within it, so that you might be able to find the offending code quicker.