What do you use Action Recorder for?

[mountpelepele]

I'm an AutoCAD instructor in a corporate training environment. I'm curious as to what everyone uses Action Recorder to do. I'm always looking for good examples of productive uses for my students.
Thanks!

[cadtag]

I suspect that I'm far from alone in saying that the Action Recorder gets used for nothing. Considering how long this forum has been here, and the extremely limited number of posts in that time, it seems fair to say that the Action Recorder is considered not usefule or not usable by the majority of people.

On the face of it, that seems odd - since a perennial wishlist item was a macro recorder. However, like many other things, the implementation is weak. I'm of the opinion that people were asking for something that would use an existing language, or at the least export to LISP so the recorded sequence could be edited, modified, de-bugged, packaged, and shared/distributed. What we got instead, was essentially a black box of next-to-zero-utility.

Heck, there were better keystroke macro-recorders in the DOS days that worked with Acad....

[rkmcswain]

I suspect that I'm far from alone in saying that the Action Recorder gets used for nothing.

That would by my answer, nothing.

[bearden383]

Every time I have tried to use it for something useful it crashes ACAD.

[jaberwok]

After hearing early reports I never even tried to use it.

[Richard.Kent]

I'm an AutoCAD instructor in a corporate training environment. I'm curious as to what everyone uses Action Recorder to do. I'm always looking for good examples of productive uses for my students.
Thanks!

I used it a few times out of curiousity, saw that you couldn't edit the file and put that shiny new toy away, never to be used again.

[shinji130]

I used it a few times out of curiousity, saw that you couldn't edit the file and put that shiny new toy away, never to be used again.

That's the same reason why I stop using it.

[mountpelepele]

My students are mostly either new users, or average users. Almost none know LISP. I try to teach them Action Recorder as a way to make their own macros without having to learn a programming language. I usually try to inspire creativity in using the tools, rather than stifling it by discussing nothing but the limitations. I had hoped that here, of all places, some of the most creative AutoCAD users in the world would have been able to find a use for Action Recorder. To inspire you, I've included a sample file I created for class. Yes, this could have been done in lisp, or as a simple script, but keep in mind that I'm dealing with students who cannot do those things. The macro is called superpurge. It audits a dwg, fixes errors, purges zero length geometry and empty text boxes, runs purge three times, and saves the drawing. Yes, it's simple, but it's a time saver for those who may not know how to program.

[Opie]

Teaching them how to do simple scripts could help those "average users" become better. Scripts are not that hard once you are taught how to do it. It is also editable which the Action Recorder files are not.

[Ed Jobe]

some of the most creative AutoCAD users in the world

That's why we rely on more powerful tools. Simple or broken tools stiffle creativity. If it can't do what we need, we search for something that can. Also, its more economical to write code that I can maintain.