Open any drawing that you suspect has redundant objects, type PURGE, and press the Enter key. The Purge window will open, which looks like this:

In the Purge window, you will find two large buttons at the top: Purgeable Items and Find Non-Purgeable Items. By default, Purgeable Items is selected, and when it is selected, the Named Items Not Used panel will show a list of items that can be purged. There is an entire list of named objects, such as Blocks, Groups, and Layers, but the redundant named objects will have a plus sign next to them, like the Blocks, Layers, and Text styles shown in Figure 9.56.

When you click the + icon, the list will expand to show the redundant objects, and you can select the object, right-click on it, and select Purge from the right-click menu to purge only the selected object. You can also click the checkboxes next to the objects to select multiple objects for purging. To purge all the redundant objects, click the Purge All button at the bottom of the Purge window.

The Purge window has options for purging Zero-length geometry, Orphaned data, and Empty text objects too, and, if available, it will be highlighted in the Options panel of the Purge window, as shown in Figure 9.57. You can select the checkboxes in the Options panel and click the Purge All button to get rid of this type of object, too:

When you click the Find Non-Purgeable Items button, the Purge window shows objects that can't be purged. When you select this kind of object, AutoCAD shows the possible reason why they are non-purgeable in the panel, as shown in Figure 9.58:

As you can see, this tool is pretty good at cleaning drawings, and there is no harm in using it a couple of times on the drawings of finished projects. However, there is another drawing clean-up tool just like Purge that is especially good at cleaning drawing objects on the go. We will discuss this tool next.