Just uncheck the box for "Assign New Element ID to Each New Element" in your Work Environment > User Preference Schemes > More Options panel as shown in the attached screenshot. As with all Work Environment panels, save your scheme and profile with a name so that you can quickly get those settings back if changed, or take your settings to another workstation.
Alternatively, so that you can have
some
elements with auto-increment and some
without
, leave the box checked and note that If, when you start placing elements with a tool, the ID field contains one or more numbers - however they are separated ... the last number will be incremented as you place additional elements. If the there are
no
numbers in your ID, nothing will be incremented.
If you later need to rename and/or renumber placed elements based on search criteria, the Element ID Manager can do that for you. See:
https://helpcenter.graphisoft.com/guides/archicad-21/archicad-21-reference-guide/documentation/calcu...
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