AutoCAD Night Run: Schedule Batch Jobs to Run Unattended Overnight

Published June 2026  |  74mph Solutions

Some batch jobs are too large to run during working hours. A purge-and-audit pass across 800 project drawings, a full title block update run, or a complete PDF export of an entire drawing archive can tie up AutoCAD for hours. Running it while you are trying to work is not practical.

Hurricane's Night Run feature solves this by letting you schedule any batch job to start at a specific time. Set it up before you leave, specify the start time, and Hurricane launches AutoCAD automatically and processes every drawing in the queue while you are away.

What Night Run Does

Night Run is a built-in scheduler in Hurricane. When you have a batch job ready to run, instead of clicking Create and Run immediately, you click Night Run. You set a start time and Hurricane takes over from there. At the scheduled time it:

• Launches AutoCAD automatically if it is not already open
• Runs the batch script across every drawing in the queue
• Saves each drawing after processing
• Logs the result for every file
• Closes AutoCAD when the run is complete

You do not need to be present. You do not need to monitor it. The workstation just needs to be left on and logged in.

How to Set Up a Night Run

1. Build your batch job as normal. Add your DWG files to the queue and select the script you want to run, whether that is a purge, a PDF export, a title block update, or any custom script.
2. Click Night Run. The Night Run button is on the main Hurricane interface next to the standard Create and Run button. It opens the scheduling dialog.
3. Set the start time. Enter the time you want the job to begin. Hurricane accepts a time in the format you specify and queues the job to fire at that moment.
4. Leave your workstation on. The machine needs to stay powered on and logged in. Hurricane runs as a Windows application, so standard Windows sleep settings should be adjusted to prevent the machine from sleeping before the job completes.
5. Check the log in the morning. When you return, the batch job is complete. Hurricane's log file shows the result for every drawing, flagging any that encountered errors during processing.

Best Uses for Night Run

Night Run is most valuable for large jobs where the processing time is significant:

• Full project purge before archive. Purging and auditing hundreds of drawings takes time. Run it overnight before a project handover rather than tying up your workstation during the day.
• Complete PDF export of a drawing set. Exporting 500+ drawings to PDF for a client submission is a background job. Set it up at end of day and the PDFs are ready the next morning.
• Sitewide title block updates. When a project number or revision changes across hundreds of drawings, the Title Block Update Wizard can process them all overnight.
• Page setup standardization. Applying a consistent page setup across an entire drawing library is a one-time run that can take hours on large projects.

Night Run vs Windows Task Scheduler

Some users attempt to use Windows Task Scheduler to run AutoCAD scripts at a scheduled time. This approach works in principle but requires manual setup of script files, working directory paths, and AutoCAD command-line parameters. Night Run handles all of this automatically, since it already knows the script, the queue, and the AutoCAD installation path. It is simpler and more reliable for CAD batch jobs.

Keeping Your Workstation Awake

For Night Run to work reliably, Windows power settings need to be configured to prevent the machine from sleeping. In Windows 11 and Windows 10, go to Settings, System, Power, and set the sleep timer to Never or to a duration longer than your expected batch run time. Re-enable sleep after the job completes if you prefer the machine to sleep when idle.

Related: AutoCAD Batch PDF Export  |  How to Batch Purge AutoCAD  |  Batch Update Title Blocks  |  All Hurricane Features