What do you use Action Recorder for?

[cadtag]

Simple tools are not in and of themselves hindrances to creativity -- in many cases, excess complexity does not equate to increased creativity. Heck, scripts and batch files are very simple tools, but over the years I had tremendous success saving time and effort with both.

Broken tools on the other hand, are _dangerous_, and should be either disposed of, deliberately ignored, or locked away. The Action Recorder is a perfect example of a tool that was broken by design. Whoever was involved with defining the scope of work for that programming effort evidently had little to no experience in either CAD production or CAD management. The tool does a poor job from either perspective, and as such is less useful than nothing. As Ed noted, the inability to maintain the action recorder macros is a huge hindrance. why waste time working on a macro that is not extensible or otherwise maintainable. Better to teach the student simple commandline lisp (getpoint) (getdist) (setq) etc.

Claiming that this tool is an implementation of the long standing AUGI wish list is at best disingenuous. No one that I'm aware of asked for a black hole recorder....

[Steve Johnson]

Action Recorder - brochure feature.

[valerie.williams]

I use the Action Recorder all the time. I have created several to cut monotonous steps - such as going into model space, searching for certain text and zooming into the area. Also, I have one that zoom extents my drawing, goes into paperspace and goes into the editing the titleblock.

[gofy]

awesome post. Finally someone else that uses it, not just complain about it.

[jaberwok]

awesome post. Finally someone else that uses it, not just complain about it.

So, please tell us what you use it for.

[Mac Demer]

No lecture here, just an answer to your question.

I have made several action recorders to simplify repetetive tasks.
One example:

pedit command to create and join polylines,
It's about 6 steps, So I recorded it, gave it a name and now it's
2 steps.

Mike

[rkmcswain]

No lecture here

I have made several action recorders to simplify repetetive tasks.
One example:

pedit command to create and join polylines,
It's about 6 steps, So I recorded it, gave it a name and now it's
2 steps.

Mike

Not to discredit your method, but using your example... that could be done as a menu macro or script file and have the benefit of being just as easy to create, much easier to edit and that ability to run in any version of AutoCAD made in the last ±20 years and almost certainly future versions.

On a curious note, how does your action recorder script handle PEDITACCEPT (or other variables that affect the script)? Do you just set the value of this variable so that you know what it is, or does the script handle the differences as needed?

[Mac Demer]

The action was recorded with peditaccept at 1. So far it has worked every time. If a drawing enviornment is different than the recorded environment a prompt will ask you if you want to continue. I realize Action Recorder is far from perfect, but it's simple and it works for the most part.



Mike

[jaberwok]

No lecture here, just an answer to your question.

I have made several action recorders to simplify repetetive tasks.
One example:

pedit command to create and join polylines,
It's about 6 steps, So I recorded it, gave it a name and now it's
2 steps.

Mike

I'm glad you find it useful.

To me , it doesn't seem worth the effort.

[Mac Demer]

I realize the Action Recorder is inferior to routines and script files.
I greatly appreciate, those who have spent hours and hours writing amazing routines and sharing them with us (I work with such folks).
But for me at least, I am paid to draft and complete my assigned projects and for that the Action Recorder works just fine.
There was no time or effort involved (it literaly took me 30 seconds to make 1)

Maybe the action recorder will inspire us to the next level of code, scr, etc.

respectfully,
Mike