Two options dialogs

[Wish List System]

Summary: Have separate options dialogs for the current drawing and for the application.

Description: The longtime AutoCAD practice of having both current drawing and application settings in the same dialog is confusing and often leads to unintended results. They should be in two separate dialogs, like in Inventor. It would be much faster and easier to see the overall program settings and the drawing settings at a glance if presented this way.


Product and Feature: AutoCAD - Other

Submitted By: Tim Skene on 11/12/2015

[rkmcswain]

Items that are drawing related have a little DWG icon next to them.
This has been in the program for 15 years.

[Tom Beauford]

Items that are drawing related have a little DWG icon next to them.
This has been in the program for 15 years.

As someone who started using r12' config command Options was a nice addition they seem to improve on with each new release.

[Wish List System]

Separate options dialogs for application & document

Summary: Have separate settings dialogs for the current drawing and the overall application.

Description: The longtime AutoCAD practice of having both current drawing and application settings in the same dialog is confusing and can lead to unintended results. They should be in two separate dialogs, like in Inventor. It would be much faster and easier to see the overall program settings and the drawing settings at a glance if presented this way.


Product and Feature: AutoCAD - Other

Submitted By: tim on 11/12/2015

[tim]

You've been using AutoCAD for many years. As a teacher, I've seen students get very confused about where settings are saved. That's why they're separate in Inventor, and every other CAD software I've seen.

[Tom Beauford]

Separate options dialogs for application & document
The longtime AutoCAD practice of having both current drawing and application settings in the same dialog is confusing and can lead to unintended results. They should be in two separate dialogs, like in Inventor. It would be much faster and easier to see the overall program settings and the drawing settings at a glance if presented this way.Product and Feature: AutoCAD - Other
Submitted By: tim on 11/12/2015

Can you give an example of how having both current drawing and application settings available in the same dialog could be confusing or can lead to unintended results?

AutoCAD also has Dsettings, Ptype, Style, Dimstyle, Lweight, Linetype, and other setting dialogs. Many more settings are available from the Ribbon and Status bar as well as build into commands as needed. Most Civil 3D settings are done on the Settings tab in Toolspace though there is one tab in Options for AEC Editor. Most Map 3D specific options are available in the Ioptions, Mapoptions, and Mapioptions dialogs.

Never tried Inventor, but I'd imagine it's similar to other AutoCAD verticals. Even with tabs only so much you can put in one dialog box and keeping the verticals settings separate from the basic AutoCAD settings makes sense. I use AutoCAD, Map 3D, and Civil 3D and I find that having the Options dialog basically the same in all three comforting.

[tim]

Inventor isn't an AutoCAD vertical, it's a completely different product. It has two different ribbon picks for settings - one for global application settings and another for current document settings. It's clear which ones affect all Inventor documents and which affect the current drawing file. AutoCAD's approach is a holdover from the old single drawing file days. In my 20 years of teaching it, new users have always met confusion over which of the many settings are stored in the current drawing and which are global, despite the dwg icon. Eventually they learn, but it's still unintuitive and not exactly logical, particularly as it has expanded over the years. If only the current drawing settings were shown together, it would be easy to see differences between drawing files. It would also allow showing more drawing settings which are not visible in any dialog.

[Tom Beauford]

Inventor isn't an AutoCAD vertical, it's a completely different product. It has two different ribbon picks for settings - one for global application settings and another for current document settings. It's clear which ones affect all Inventor documents and which affect the current drawing file. AutoCAD's approach is a holdover from the old single drawing file days. In my 20 years of teaching it, new users have always met confusion over which of the many settings are stored in the current drawing and which are global, despite the dwg icon. Eventually they learn, but it's still unintuitive and not exactly logical, particularly as it has expanded over the years. If only the current drawing settings were shown together, it would be easy to see differences between drawing files. It would also allow showing more drawing settings which are not visible in any dialog.

As a completely different product wouldn't it make sense that it's different? All settings in AutoCAD's Options are global AutoCAD application settings that apply no matter which drawing is open, the dwg icon simply identifies drawing elements -vs- interface elements. What current document settings in AutoCAD Options are you referring to? Have you had any working experience with AutoCAD or any of it's verticals other than apparently the teaching job?

[tim]

I've had about 25 years of working on many commercial projects with AutoCAD Mechanical and AutoCAD in 2D and 3D, and developed a customization product called Promenu. The teaching has also given lots of experience in how new users see things and where they have difficulties.
In Inventor it calls the current drawing settings document settings, they're the same thing. In AutoCAD options most of the settings are global, but those with the drawing icon apply only in the current drawing, switch to another drawing and they may change. Dimassoc, fillmode and visretain for example. It's not that many drawing settings, so if they were put in a drawing options dialog it wouldn't be a big change.

[Tom Beauford]

Having gotten past AutoCAD should act like some other software there are a few tweaks that might not hurt. Visretain and settings for Visretainmode (Applies to 2018.1 Update and later) are in the Layer Properties Manager where they logicly should be. I've always been fond of having multiple ways of doing things in AutoCAD though, because to someone else that might be the last place they would look.

It's really handy to have easy access to system variable settings that cause the most cries for help on forum sites. Few have ever seen a need to change the values of Dimassoc, Fillmode, Pickfirst, or Pickadd from their defaults, but somehow they get changed. All these issues are easily solved in Options and many would be upset if that ability went away. AutoCAD would have to add a lot more online support staff.

Too many system variables, environmental variables, & Windows registry settings to create dialog boxes to control them all, but what we have works for my needs for now though I lean heavily on my acad.lsp and acaddoc.lsp files to keep them straight.