Restrict AutoCAD 2009 to one drawing per session

[dave.wright]

Does anyone know how to restrict autocad 2009 to only open one drawing per session??

Cheers

Dave

[lpseifert]

Try SDI=1 ...

[dave.wright]

Thank you .....

[jpaulsen]

SDI=1 will work but it will disable some AutoCAD functionality like the new xref dialog. We keep it set to 0 as intended by Autodesk and tell the users to always use the aecopen command to open drawings.

[dzatto]

SDI=1 will work but it will disable some AutoCAD functionality like the new xref dialog. We keep it set to 0 as intended by Autodesk and tell the users to always use the aecopen command to open drawings.

I'm jUSt curious as to why you would restrict users to open multiple drawings? I would quit my job if they didn't let me open multiple drawings!

[lpseifert]

SDI=1 lets you only open 1 dwg at a time (Single Document Interface is on).

[jpaulsen]

I'm jUSt curious as to why you would restrict users to open multiple drawings? I would quit my job if they didn't let me open multiple drawings!

LDT attaches to an external database when you open a drawing. Because of this LDT was always limited to one drawing at at time. In earlier versions it was very easy to corrupt the database if you opened LDT twice and had two drawings open. This has supposedly been fixed but we really don't trust it.

In the 2007 release the Autodesk team has nerfed the SDI variable in preparation of eliminating it in a future release (LDT was the only app still using it). There used to acceptable values of 3 and 4 which is was LDT used to use. The Civil team did their best to prevent more than one drawing open at a time in LDT but there are ways it can be done.

If you need more than one drawing open at a time and you are in an LDT environment I suggest using LE Map to open the additional drawings.

[dzatto]

AHhh LDT, got it. I'm using ACA so it's not a problem. I remember the days when I was using LDT for site layouts. Yep, one drawing at a time!

[Steve Johnson]

If SDI=1, make sure you don't drag and drop drawings onto AutoCAD 2009 (it will crash), and make sure OPENPARTIAL is set to 0, or bits of your drawing may vanish. OPENPARTIAL should always be set to 0 anyway. The default is 1, and it's a drawing corruption machine.