Did you know that you shouldn't open DWG files directly from any removable media? Nor should you use SAVEAS to save a drawing directly to any removable media, including flash drives, CD burners, or floppy disks. Why? Because if you do, the default location for your drawing files is the removable disk. This can slow your work considerably, because the removable disk can fill up with BAK files, and the computer does frequent searches on it while you're working. Instead, to use a file from a removable disk, first copy it to the hard drive, and then open it from there. When you save files, even backup files, first save them to the hard drive, and then copy them to the removable disk.

To save a backup to a removable disk, right-click the filename in any file-management dialog box, and select the Send To option, as shown in Figure 2.2. Files copied from a CDR or DVD+R disk will probably have the Read-Only property checked. To change that, right-click the filename, select Properties, and then clear the Read-Only attribute.

When you archive drawings on servers or local hard drives that have a limited capacity, reduce the file size as much as possible by using the PURGE or WBLOCK command. If you have limited file space, use compression software to reduce the drawings' sizes even further. You may even ask whether you really need all those files, but I err on the side of saving everything.

Don't rely entirely on keeping files on a single computer, or even in a single room. Writers often refer to fire copies of their manuscripts. You might think the same way. What if your office burns down? Invest in a DVD burner, determine which files would cost you money if you lost them, and put those files on DVD. Then, store them in another building.

Figure 2.2. Using Send To to save backup files

I have found that a great deal of confusion among AutoCAD stems from not understanding the notion of a search path. When any software needs a file, it looks for it in either the specific location you give (such as C:dwgmydrawing.DWG) or a predetermined set of folders. AutoCAD won't search an entire computer looking for the application files it needs, because that would take an enormous amount of time.

The order in which AutoCAD searches for folders also matters, because if it's looking for a file named ACAD.LIN, for example, it stops at the first such file it finds. It's possible that there are other files with the same name on your system, and they could even be in a folder that is specified as part of the search path; but if AutoCAD finds another one first, that's the one it uses.

If your custom linetypes, aliases, or AutoLISP commands aren't working as you hoped, it's possible that the file that contains them isn't early enough in the AutoCAD file search path, and that some other version of the file is being found first. That's why all the sections of the Files tab include a Move Up button. You can create new folders, if you desire, and then use this button to move them into the location along the path that suits your needs—usually at the top.

I recommend that you create a folder in which you place all the files you use to customize AutoCAD, except the CUI files. This folder should not be located in the C:program filesAutodeskAutocad 2007 folder. Otherwise, you may inadvertently delete it when you upgrade to a new version of AutoCAD.

Once you have a folder for your customization files, add it to the Project Files Search Path. This setting identifies the folders that AutoCAD searches by default when it needs a file. This folder can be your personal folder or a network location that allows all users to have access to office-wide customization files. After you add the folder to the search path, move it to the top of the search path list so that your files are the first ones AutoCAD finds.

The Customization Files section shows the default location of both the Main and Enterprise CUI files. You should customize only the Main file for personal settings. The Enterprise file is to be created and managed by a CAD manager. It's generally used over a network for customization files to be used by everyone, and it's read-only to most users.

You can also set a new location for Autosave files in this tab using the Browse button. I recommend saving them in a folder that you've created. Doing so eliminates the problem of the hidden folder into which those files are placed by default. I recommend that you also create a location for your own custom DWT files and add that folder to the Drawing Template File Location path under Template Settings. The folder can be local or a shared folder on a network. If you're networked, you may want to point to a different location for plotters or pen style tables as well. See Figure 2.4.

The Display tab is where you can get creative about your personal preferences: the colors of backgrounds, the command line, the layouts, and so on. You should hide scroll bars; doing so gives you more screen space and prevents the sudden shift in the screen display that sometimes happens when you grab a scroll bar by mistake as you try to make a selection near the edge of your screen. You can also change your background color to white, which you may want to do if you use an earlier release of AutoCAD and are doing screen captures or using the WMFOUT command to create a raster image. If your eyes are going bad, increase the font size in the command line. If you think a magenta background would be soothing, change it.

Figure 2.4. Files tab of the Options dialog box

Figure 2.5. Display tab of the Options dialog box

Other things of note in this dialog box include the controls over layouts. By default, a floating viewport is added automatically to a new layout. If you don't like having a viewport created automatically, clear that setting. Set Arc And Circle Smoothness to at least 1000. On earlier releases the default value of VIEWRES is set to 100. The size of the crosshair can be increased from 5 percent up to 100 percent if you just have to have an R14 retro look. See Figure 2.5.

By default, AutoCAD uses the file format of the current release when saving. Set the Save As option to an earlier release if you exchange drawings with other companies. I've gotten stuck more than once when I produced some work for someone and sent it off, only to find that they used an incompatible release.

Set Automatic Save to 15 to 30 minutes to reduce the number of interruptions. I find that 10 minutes is a bit too frequent for complex drawings, because the save takes time and system resources.

The Incremental Save Percentage balances how quickly the drawing saves with how much space it takes up. The larger the value, the less time required for saving each drawing; but the size of the drawing is much larger until the estimated wasted space exceeds 50 percent. Once that happens, a full save with smaller file size takes place. I find that 50 percent works well because most workstations have ample storage capacity. If it takes too long to save your files, bump this value up to a higher number.

Security Options are interesting, primarily because of the opportunity to add password protection to your drawings. I don't know of any offices that use the digital signatures or password protection available by clicking this button. If I were a CAD manager, I'd turn it off just to prevent users from locking a drawing. Of course, an automated backup system should also be in place, with rights carefully controlled.

If backup files take up too much room on your hard drive, you can disable them here. I've done that in the past in student computer labs, but large-capacity hard drives are so cheap that I haven't bothered to do so for a while.

If you're using an earlier release of AutoCAD, increase Number Of Recently-Used Files To List from 4 to the maximum of 9. It would be nice if the history function of the much-maligned AutoCAD Today had been retained, but it wasn't. Setting this value to 9 is the closest you can come.

Demand Load Xrefs Enabled With Copy is generally the best setting for external references, but you may want to clear the Allow Other Users To Refedit Current Drawing check box if you're a CAD manager. It's easy for someone using an XRef to change it and save the result. I prefer to have someone open an externally referenced drawing directly if it needs to be edited. Clearing the check box sets the variable XEDIT to 0. See Figure 2.6.

The Plot And Publish tab has a lot of things worth changing. Begin by selecting a default plotter. Doing so reduces the likelihood of someone using the wrong device. If you use the Plot To File option, as I often do to create raster plot images, you may want to create a different default location for plot files. By default, background plotting is used only when you plot using the Publishing functions. If you add the Plotting setting, it will speed up your plotting somewhat. If you use different plotter configurations for different sheet sizes, as is common, I suggest that you change the setting for Paper Size to Use The Plot Device Paper Size.

Figure 2.6. Open And Save tab of the Options dialog box

I also check the Hide System Printers box so that every print device available to a particular workstation doesn't show up as an available plotter. That way, output can be controlled by specific plot styles, and it's less likely that users will select a plotter for a new configuration. This tab is also the place to set up default plot stamp data.

Clicking the Plot Style Table Settings button gives you some control over plotting with color tables or style tables. Plotting is discussed in Chapter 6, "Plotting," at length, including a discussion of the merits of color tables versus style tables. If there wasn't such a long legacy of plotting by color, we wouldn't be faced with this choice—we'd be using style tables. But in my experience, most offices use color tables. I suggest specifying a default Plot Style Table here to avoid the None option being left on by mistake. When the Plot Style Table is set to None, you get a color plot that matches object color, which may not be what you want. See Figure 2.7.

I have suggestions about only two options on this tab. The 3D Performance settings depend a great deal on your hardware, and I don't have enough experience with the options to advise you. You can find out whether your graphics card is certified by selecting View Tune Log and clicking Check For Updates, which takes you to the Autodesk website's certified hardware URL.

Otherwise, if you want the startup dialog box, this tab is where you can change AutoCAD's current behavior. If you use a legacy ACAD.LSP file, check Load acad.lsp With Every Drawing unless you want it loaded only in the first drawing that is opened or started in an editing session. If so, you can create an ACADDOC.LSP file that will load in each drawing, and use the ACAD.LSP file to start up applications you want loaded only once. See Figure 2.8.

Figure 2.7. Plot And Publish tab of the Options dialog box

Figure 2.8. System tab of the Options dialog box

The User Preferences tab contains some great stuff. I like the double-click functions of AutoCAD, but I know a lot of users who don't. If double-clicking an object and having its editing function pop up is annoying, you can turn off double-click editing here. Far more useful to me is the time-sensitive right-click available via the Right-Click Customization button. See Figure 2.9.

If you've been using AutoCAD for some time, you undoubtedly got used to right-clicking to end a command and then right-clicking to repeat a command you just exited. Drawing lines involved doing that constantly. When right-click menus became important in AutoCAD 2000, it was a difficult transition for some of us. We didn't like the menu popping up with Enter as the first option every time we right-clicked. With time-sensitive right-click, you can a get different behavior from a quick right-click than from a slow one. A quick click issues the Enter command, and a slow click brings up a menu. If you haven't tried this feature yet, you should, even if you're not an old-timer. The default setting of 250 milliseconds is OK, but you may want to lower the value so the time necessary to bring up a menu is reduced.

Priority For Coordinate Data Entry should be left the way it is. Otherwise, a specific absolute coordinate you type in may be overridden by a running osnap. That was a significant problem in AutoCAD before this feature was added. Scripts are exempted by default because people sometimes write script files in which they intend a running osnap to over-ride absolute coordinates.

Figure 2.9. User Preferences tab of the Options dialog box

I have one other caution about the User Preferences tab. If you clear the Make New Dimensions Associative check box, the value of DIMASSOC changes from 2 to 1. This means dimensions will be associated with definition points, not with geometry, so they won't move when the geometry moves. They also won't give accurate values in Paper Space, except when the viewport being used is scaled 1:1.

The big news in this tab since AutoCAD 2006 is the Edit Scale List button. You can add or remove any scale from the Viewport Scale Control drop-down list that appears on the Viewports toolbar. You may remove scales to prevent users from selecting a plot scale that doesn't conform to your office standards. This drop-down list is used for selecting plot scales for viewports in layouts. If you've deleted some scales that you want back, you can reset the list to the defaults.

I have two recommendations for the Drafting tab: Reduce Aperture Size to make selecting objects with running osnaps more precise, and use Drafting Tooltip Settings to increase the size of the dynamic input cursor text. If your eyes are good, and you don't do presentations, you can leave it the way it is. See Figure 2.10.

The only thing I recommend regarding the 3D Modeling tab is selecting the Reverse Mouse Wheel Zoom option if you also use Autodesk Inventor. When I've been working with one or the other, the zoom wheel feels backward. If you work with both AutoCAD and Inventor, this adjustment is surprisingly helpful. See Figure 2.11.

Figure 2.10. Drafting tab of the Options dialog box

Figure 2.11. 3D Modeling tab of the Options dialog box

The Selection tab, not surprisingly, is where you can control AutoCAD's behavior when you're selecting entities. See Figure 2.12.

Three options on this tab often go awry:

The Profiles tab allows you to save a named profile once you've gone to the trouble of setting up the interface exactly the way you want it. A named profile is saved in the system registry and can be set current at any time, including on startup if you use a desktop icon and place the /p switch in the Target window. The only settings that are saved in a named profile are those that can be changed in the Options dialog box.

If you want to use a named profile on another workstation, or you want to back up the profile, export the result to an AutoCAD Registry file (.arg) using the Export button. You can import the file using the Import button. See Figure 2.13.

Figure 2.13. Profiles tab of the Options dialog box

Table 2.4 contains several lines from a much longer FOLDERS.BAT batch file that I use to create directories for multiple users. You don't need to see all the lines, because they're similar. The batch file contains only the lines in the column labeled DOS Code. The Purpose column explains what each line does.

You can use batch files as logon scripts on a Windows network so that when someone logs on, the batch file runs automatically. Table 2.5 contains several lines from a LOGAED.BAT batch file used to manage the logon process. In this case, a drive letter is mapped to a folder named for an individual user, and another is mapped to a shared resource folder available to all users.

Note

The NET USE command is a network OS command and won't be listed in the DOS help system. To see a list of other network commands, type net help

I use batch files to manage my own backup process, independent of the process available on my school's network—in fact, my backup process is redundant. It's not that I'm compulsive; I just don't like the idea of losing work. I use a similar system on my personal computer. The batch file shown in Table 2.6 copies all DWG files from the H: drive (a network drive on different server) to the network directory mapped as S: if they are newer than those that are already there. It then copies all DWG files on the S: drive to the H: drive, but again, only if they're newer than the versions that are already there. This type of batch file can be used as a way to make sure you have the latest versions of all DWG files on both network drives. It uses two switches:

The batch file shown in Table 2.7 has a slight twist: It backs up to a removable DVD that doesn't have enough capacity to store all the files I want backed up from my hard drive. BACKUP.BAT lets me keep ongoing backups of new files. The D: drive is my DVD burner. The date switch here is used to copy only files created after a specific date—in this case, December 1, 2007. After the computer is done copying, the batch file opens in Notepad, and I change the date. When the DVD gets full, I start a new backup disk.

The second line of the batch file in Table 2.7 is interesting. It actually opens the batch file so I can change the date each time it runs. Once I save the new version of the batch file with the new date, the DOS window closes.

There's a limit on how many characters AutoCAD can read from a single line in the acad.pgp file, and blank spaces in folder names and filenames can cause problems. You may also run into this problem in other situations.

To avoid surprises when referring to a long path, use the 8.3 naming convention if you want to write a new AutoCAD command. For example, the acad.lin file, which is located in the Documents and Settings folder, could be opened with the new command LIN if it were defined as follows. Note that the line is broken here because it is too long to fit on the page of this book, but it must be entered as a single line in the actual acad.pgp file:

lin,notepad c:docume~1danapplic~1autodesk
autoca~3
16.2enusupportacad.lin,1,,