DDE subkey creation in AutoCAD R 2005

I'm battling unresolved or incorrectly resolved xref's when more that one AutoCAD drawing is opened from different directory locations. In ACAD 2002 I corrected this problem by deleting the DDEexec subkey then turning off the "Create Subkey" and "Set Value" permissions under the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT AutoCAD.Drawing.15.

Unfortunately the AutoCAD R2005 (AutoCAD.Drawing.16) software works a little different. Turning off the "Create Subkey" and "Set Value" options does not prevent DDE from turning on and prevents right click options from changing between different vertical products. In fact, if AutoCAD R2005 is current (but not open) the other right click options claim that there is no program associated with the .DWG file type.

The Engineers and drafters I work with usually have at least a couple of drawings (in different directories) opened at a time. We take full advantage of xref's and they must work correctly. Has any one expereinced this? ....found a fix for it? .....

Hi

Check out the following Technical Document on the Autodesk web site under the Knowledge Base section -

ID: TS73888 - Relative paths for external references may load incorrect drawing

Note, the above doesn't answer your query directly but hopefully it may help point you in the right direction.

Have a good one, Mike

Thanks Mike,
I appreciate your replay. I do understand that this is AutoDesk's explanation but I have found that deleting the DDE subkey in the registry and then denying permissions to "Create subkeys" solves this problem (in ACAD 2002). Unfortunately the way that ACAD 2005 initialized a new user (for network ACAD 2005) apparently creates a hive in the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT for the new user, creates the subkeys and sets them all to full control. Do you know where the ACAD.EXE gets its instruction for the creation of a new user? I assume it's somewhere in the UserDataCache directory.

I also can't find any info on what ACAD 2005 uses DDE for and the ramification of turning it off. I assume it's used for table creation and OLE links to MS applications.

Thanks again for your help. As you can see I'm a new AUGI guy and may not know the ins and outs of submitting a question to the group.

Hi

Unfortunately I don't have AutoCAD 2005 + I'm no expert on Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE) so I'll probably won't be much help to yourself....

AutoCAD 2002 comes with "ddelib.dll", does AutoCAD 2005 ship with this file?

Personally I would try turning DDE off and see what happens (if anything); you can always turn it back on if you encounter any issues/problems.

From the little I've read about DDE and AutoCAD, I'm under the impression that DDE is no longer used very much (if at all) for communication processes between other Microsoft Windows Applications.

The following might be of some interest -

Getting Started on the Automation Path: Using AutoCAD with MS Office

+

A web search returned 503 results -

"Dynamic Data Exchange" AutoCAD

Hopefully someone that really understands this subject will chip-in very soon and offer some real advice that will enable you to resolve your issue/problem + get me out of this little hole I've dug for myself.....

Have a good one, Mike

ps You may be new but you're doing fine (even if this question is a little toughie ;) )