Command Line Options - Undo

There are some classic things thing AutoCAD has pretty much always done, but they tend to get lost in time. They are usually linked to forgotten or never used command line options. Once a command is entered there are options to most of them that you can control at the command line. I'll post more in the future, but for now one of my favorite, most versatile, and under used command options goes to the UNDO command.

Auto: Groups the actions of a command, making them all reversible by a single undo.

All: Turns on the full UNDO command.

None: Turns off the U and UNDO commands and discards any UNDO command information saved earlier in the editing session.

One: Limits UNDO to a single operation.

Combine: Controls whether multiple, consecutive zoom and pan commands are combined as a single operation for undo and redo operations. Pan and zoom commands that are started from the menu are not combined, and always remain separate actions.

Layer: Controls whether the layer dialog operations are combined as a single undo operation.

Begin/End: This option groups actions together driven by the user. I use this in lisp.

Mark/Back: Mark places a book mark in the undo log. At a later time you can chose to undo back to the last Mark you placed in the log. If there are no marks, undo back will take you back to when you first opened the drawing. You will get an alert telling you so. I like this for the times I wished I nevere open a drawing in the first place.

How to Open the Recovery Manager

Not to tell a mean story but one of my users gets cold in the summer. She was running a space heater at her desk with quite a few drawings open. When the space heater tripped the over current device it caused much sadness. The real sadness came after. She used the Recovery Manager to get some of the many open files back in shape but accidental closed it before she was finished.

Today's lesson is how to open the Recovery Manager when you need it back.

Type drawingrecovery on the commandline and hit enter.

Yeah, I know, the problem was a lot longer than the solution.

Error of the Week

You might have to click on the image above to read it, so I'll summarize. One or more objects can not be save to the specified format, so no savie.

I don't know. I ran an audit and purged it. It saves now. I am curious about the craziest error messages you have ever received. Comment back if you have a favorite.

How Fast is Fast?

The new year is around the corner. Here is a tip to kick the year off right. I am often told by users that their PC is slow. It is a perception they have anyway and a lot of the time the squeaky wheel gets an upgrade. In times like this where you can't throw money around, it pays to be able to make informed decisions on buying and upgrading PCs.

To help me, I have everyone run a speed test quarterly. The test is simple and comes in three parts;

1. Open AutoCAD and tell me how long it takes to get to cross hairs from double clicking the launch icon.
2. Open a medium sized file I placed on the network and tell me how long it took.
3. Open a large file I placed on the network and tell me how long it took.

After the initial test I found that those that complained the most had the fastest PCs. After the tests I was able to tell users where they ranked. If they ranked high, they felt way better about their speed. If they ranked low, I was able to proactively let them know when they could expect an upgrade.

There is an element of trust involved in having users submit times themselves. Another problem I have is getting results at all. This can be circumvented by running the test yourself off hours. In fact that might help keep it more fair by the removing varying network traffic from the equation. I have also seen lisps out there to gather data like open times, although I have not run any.

How ever you do it, knowing the facts vs. someone's perception is a much better place to be in.