Hello AUGI Members

[vferrara]

We are having difficulty with some less experienced CAD users opening drawings and unloading and or attaching / detaching x-refs, changing the paper space viewports, turning layers on / off, etc. and then saving the drawing file in this condition. Then the drawing needs to be opened by a more experienced CAD user and restored back to its correct settings.

We are trying to educate these users on the proper procedures however, this is very frustrating especially when there is a deadline and you open a drawing expecting it to be OK and find everything needs to be fixed.

I know we can make a snapshot of the layer states on a drawing but is there a way to be able to capture all of the conditions of a drawing such as.....layer states, x-ref attachments, linetypes, viewports, views, dimension styles, text styles, etc.....and then restore everything back to the original state.....???

Any assistance and recommendations would be appreciated....!

Regards,
Vince

[ccowgill]

We are having difficulty with some less experienced CAD users opening drawings and unloading and or attaching / detaching x-refs, changing the paper space viewports, turning layers on / off, etc. and then saving the drawing file in this condition. Then the drawing needs to be opened by a more experienced CAD user and restored back to its correct settings.

We are trying to educate these users on the proper procedures however, this is very frustrating especially when there is a deadline and you open a drawing expecting it to be OK and find everything needs to be fixed.

I know we can make a snapshot of the layer states on a drawing but is there a way to be able to capture all of the conditions of a drawing such as.....layer states, x-ref attachments, linetypes, viewports, views, dimension styles, text styles, etc.....and then restore everything back to the original state.....???

Any assistance and recommendations would be appreciated....!

Regards,
Vince
fire the users, or remove their cad rights, there is no excuse for this behavior no matter what your experience level is. As far as I know there is no way to capture all the conditions, if you detach an xref, there is no way to reattach it. you could just get the back up, or start using a routine that will make a copy of the drawing as soon as it is opened so you can restore the "original"

modify this for your paths and add it to your Acaddoc.lsp

(vl-load-com)
(setq acadObject (vlax-get-acad-object)) ;get Autocad object
(setq acadDocument (vla-get-ActiveDocument acadObject))
;get the Activedocument object
(vl-mkdir "c:/autocad auto save")
(vl-mkdir "c:/autocad auto save/bakup dwg")
(vl-file-copy
(vla-get-fullname acadDocument)
(strcat
"c:\\autocad auto save\\BAKUP DWG\\"
(vl-string-right-trim ".dwg" (getvar "dwgname"))
"_Original.dwg"
) ;_ end of strcat
) ;_ end of vl-file-copy

it will make a copy of the drawing in the folder of your choosing as soon as the drawing is opened. that way, you can go back and find an original before they messed it up.

[T.Willey]

I agree with Chris about what you should do with those users.

But if you want to save the information, you could save it. It just will take a lot of coding, and an understanding of how one works. You can save all the information you want to a custom dictionary within the drawing ( or several for your case ), and then check to make sure that what is in the drawing and the dictionaries match. Not something I would want to code, and not something that should need to be coded, but it is a possibility.

[kennet.sjoberg]

fire the users. . . .it will make a copy of the drawing in the folder of your choosing as soon as the drawing is opened.

. . .so if the drawing is messed up you make a copy of that :shock:

: ) Happy Computing !


kennet

[tedg]

. . .so if the drawing is messed up you make a copy of that :shock:

: ) Happy Computing !


kennet
I think he meant; when the inexperienced cad user opens up the drawing, a copy is automatically made somewhere else, so if they screw it up, there's a back-up.

...but I may have misunderstood. :?

[ccowgill]

. . .so if the drawing is messed up you make a copy of that :shock:

: ) Happy Computing !


kennet
your are right, I screwed up.:Oops: Here is the fixed code:



(vl-load-com)
(setq acadObject (vlax-get-acad-object)) ;get Autocad object
(setq acadDocument (vla-get-ActiveDocument acadObject))
;get the Activedocument object
(vl-mkdir "c:/autocad auto save")
(vl-mkdir "c:/autocad auto save/bakup dwg")
(vl-file-copy
(vla-get-fullname acadDocument)
(strcat
"c:\\autocad auto save\\BAKUP DWG\\"
(vl-string-right-trim ".dwg" (getvar "dwgname"))
"_"(rtos (atof (substr (rtos (variant-value (vla-getvariable (vla-get-activedocument (vlax-get-acad-object)) "cdate")) 2 4) 1)) 2)
"_Original.dwg"
) ;_ end of strcat
) ;_ end of vl-file-copy



that way, it never gets overwritten, because the date is always changing. You just have to remember to go in periodically and clean it out.

[aaron.bentley]

Just a thought......Can you go in and set the drawings to "read only" and then it forces them to save as something different after they change things and then they can't mess up the original drawings??

[vferrara]

I want to thank everyone for your quick response.

Most of the users that fall into this category are engineers who do not have a lot of AutoCAD experience and do some drafting to support thier project requirements. They are engineers first and drafters second and the real solution is to educate them so this type of anomalie will be eliminated in the future, but this will not happen overnight and I am trying to keep the damage to a minimum.

It preliminarily appears that the automatic backup on open might be the best method to initially resolve this anoying problem. In the future the firm may mighate to a Electronic Document Management System which will automatically create and maintain backups of the drawing files when they are opened, but for now I will test out the copy drawing option.

Thanks again for you assistance.....any other thoughts are welcome...!

Regards,
Vince

[BoKirra]

...
Most of the users that fall into this category are engineers who do not have a lot of AutoCAD experience and do some drafting to support thier project requirements. They are engineers first and drafters second and the real solution is to educate them so this type of anomalie will be eliminated in the future, but this will not happen overnight and I am trying to keep the damage to a minimum.
...

Your are alreay in the right direction.
A routine or two will not simply provide you the answer.
This is about education.
I had the exact siduation which you are struggling.

The details of the solution are:
1) Spend somtime with your engineers & drafters. Explain the principles of drafting to them.
2) Setup a drafting standard with your top drafter(s).
3) Speak to your engineers & encourage them always asking drafters if they are not sure what to do.

The basic thing is that drafters have the best drafting skills but engineers or someone else ignore this.

Cheers.

[charlieb]

Another possible soulution would be to set up the engineering machines so that the offending commands are hard to locate or accomplish the desired effect. Depending on the version of acad you are using perhaps create a pgp file overwriting the xref command to simply unload the xref. That way the changes that are most offensive could be controlled and what ever the engineer is trying to do can still be accomplished.

[kennet.sjoberg]

This is all about education, fix and tricks may do more harm than help.

I hope that your IT stab taking backup every night, once a week and one a month so they can find previous drawing there.

Other places there you may find them are in AutoCAD's "Temporary Drawing File Location"
file named "MyDrawing_index_random.bak" and "MyDrawing_index_random.sv$"


: ) Happy Computing !

kennet

[rkmcswain]

... fix and tricks may do more harm than help. Exactly. I like to reference something Mark Kiker uses in his CAD Management classes: "Don't let a management problem become a technology problem"