Hidden for some time now in the lower right-hand corner of AutoCAD is a little light bulb. If you are like most, you have simply let this little light bulb burn –wasting electricity. At first glance it may seem a little out of place. After all light bulbs belong in the layer manager– right?
Even still – what’s up with the light bulb in the lower corner of the screen? What many seem to discount as being a status notification of some sort is in fact an actual command.
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Click on the
located in the lower right hand corner, and select Isolate Objects.
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Select the objects you would like to isolate. Objects can be on different layers.
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Only selected objects are displayed after defining the selection set. Unselected objects are “turned off”.
To turn everything back on click on the 
located in the lower right hand corner and select End object isolation.
***UPDATE – Thanks to Jimmys comment it has been brought to my attention that this feature is only available in the AutoCAD vertical products. What I mean by vertical products is AutoCAD Civil 3D, AutoCAD Map 3D, AutoCAD Architecture, etc. ***
pretty cool i never even noticed it
@Rich – Go check out Jimmy’s website (http://jtbworld.blogspot.com/). He has written an app that does this, and may be able to hook you up.
I’m interested in the VBA that adds object isolation to base Autocad. Can you hook me up?
I reset my acad profile and the lil light bulb disappeared. I used this tool quite frequently… anyone know how i can put it back onto my screen? Thanks!
Not to spoil Jimmy’s thunder, but he has actually developed a tool using VBA that adds the object isolation to base AutoCAD(pretty cool stuff). In exchanging e-mails with him it seems he plans to post it to his site (http://jtbworld.blogspot.com/) soon. I will be sure to update this post with a link to his.
Jimmy – please enlighten us… I learned AutoCAD with a vertical product (LDD) and dearly miss the isolate objects command in vanilla AutoCAD.
I guess you are refering to ADT or ACA based verticals since it is not in vanilla AutoCAD.
For vanilla AutoCAD I have a solution though for those interested.