Hi, when I issue the "erase" command, or when the graphics window automatically erases because the next plot starts on a new 'page', if any part (or even the whole) of the graphics window is covered by other windows, then the part that is covered is not erased. If I issue a plot or other graphics command, this will happily draw the expected output in the window, even in the covered part (though of course if the covered part still contains the remains of a previous plot because the erase has failed for the covered part, then my new plot will simply be superimposed on that remnant). I'm running IDL from the command line, rather than via the development environment, and as my monitor is not very large, I usually have the terminal window on top while issuing commands/running programs and then bring the graphics window to the top to see the result. This is why this failure to erase is really annoying! I'm not sure if this is a problem with IDL settings or with my X-window settings. I'm running under openSUSE 10.2, with KDE 3.5.5 "release 45.8". Tim