Baking

So far everything has been a live preview. Baking commits Grasshopper geometry into the AutoCAD drawing as permanent entities. Let's do it with a minimal worked example.

This example covers raw geometry only. Geometry such as curves, surfaces, and solids exists in both Rhino and AutoCAD, so it can be modelled in Grasshopper and baked straight across. Some objects, however, are AutoCAD-only types — Blocks, Layers, Line Types, and Layouts have no direct Rhino equivalent and are handled with dedicated components rather than this geometry-bake flow. Those are introduced in AutoCAD-Native Types.

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Build the definition

1. Open Grasshopper (GRASSHOPPER) and create a simple piece of geometry — for example, a Circle (as in Preview) or a Box.
2. From the AutoCAD tab, place the Bake to AutoCAD component (abbreviated AC-Bake, found under AutoCAD ▸ Baking) onto the canvas.

The component has the following inputs and output. You don't need to memorise them — hover your mouse over the component (or over an individual input/output node) on the canvas and Grasshopper shows the same information in a tooltip:

Port	Name	Required?	Purpose
Input	Document (Doc)	Optional	Target AutoCAD document. If omitted, the active document is used.
Input	Objects (O)	Required	The geometry to bake — curves, points, meshes, and solids.
Input	Settings (S)	Optional	Bake settings — layer, linetype, and colour to apply to the baked entities.
Output	ObjectIds (Ids)	—	The AutoCAD ObjectIds of the entities that were created.
Button	Bake	—	An on-canvas button. Press it to bake.

3. Wire your geometry into the Objects input.
4. Leave Document and Settings empty for now — the bake will target the active drawing and use default layer/colour. (You can revisit Settings later to bake onto a specific layer or colour.)

A Circle wired into the Bake to AutoCAD (AC-Bake) component, with a Button on the Bake input.

The bake component can be driven by a Bake input or by its Bake button. You can switch between the two at any time with the right-click Driven Button toggle.

Bake it

1. Press the Bake button on the component.
2. The geometry is written into AutoCAD's model space as real entities, and the component's ObjectIds output reports the IDs of what was created.

The button acts as a data dam: the bake runs only on the solve you triggered. Changing something upstream — dragging a radius slider, say — recomputes the definition but doesn't bake.

With the Grasshopper preview off, the baked entities persist in the AutoCAD drawing.

3. Select the baked geometry in AutoCAD. Unlike the preview, it's selectable, lives on a layer, and will be saved with the .dwg.

The Bake to AutoCAD component in its two flavours — with the on-canvas Bake button (top), and with the Bake input that replaces it when Driven Button is turned off (bottom).

Seeing double

Let's prove that warning to ourselves — it's the most important thing to understand about baking.

1. Press Bake again. Look in AutoCAD: there are now two circles sitting directly on top of each other. The first bake didn't update — the second press created a brand-new circle alongside it. Baking always adds; it never replaces what you baked before.
2. Delete the baked circles in AutoCAD. Select all the circles you've created and erase them, so you're starting from a clean drawing.

Further reading: What a held Boolean Toggle does

The Bake button bakes once per press. The Bake input doesn't have that protection, and it's worth understanding why before you use it.

1. Right-click the component and turn Driven Button off. The button is replaced by a Bake input.
2. Wire a Boolean Toggle into it and set it to true. This bakes once, as before.
3. Now drag the radius slider. Because the Toggle is held at true, every time you change the slider Grasshopper recomputes and bakes again. As you move the slider you leave behind a trail of circles, each at a different radius.
4. Set the Toggle back to false to stop baking.

A held-true toggle bakes on every recompute, scattering a circle at each radius the slider passed through.

If you do use the input, use a Button, not a Toggle — a Button sends true only for the instant you press it, so it bakes exactly once. This is precisely the trap the on-canvas Bake button removes, which is why it's now the default.

Tracking your bake

Pressing Bake always adds. When you want the drawing to follow the definition instead, reach for a separate component: Tracked Bake to AutoCAD (AC-TBake), which sits next to Bake to AutoCAD under AutoCAD ▸ Baking.

This is a different component, not a setting on the one you've been using — the two live side by side on the tab and you choose between them when you place the node.

Tracked Bake to AutoCAD has no button and no Bake input. It bakes whenever its inputs change, and before each bake it deletes the objects it created last time — so editing your definition updates the drawing in place instead of leaving a trail behind.

1. Delete the Bake to AutoCAD component and place a Tracked Bake to AutoCAD in its place, then wire your Circle into Objects.
2. Drag the radius slider. Watch AutoCAD: the circle resizes rather than multiplying.

A tracking component renders black on the canvas and reports how many objects it's holding.

Black means tracking. Any component that keeps a connection to what it created draws its capsule black and shows a "Tracking n Objects" message — Tracked Bake to AutoCAD, Create AutoCAD Block Reference, and the Create Civil3d … components. Right-click one for:

• Forget Connections — stop tracking, and leave the objects in the drawing.
• Delete Connected Objects — erase the tracked objects from the drawing, after a confirmation prompt.