Lost Design Centre and Properties Dialog boxes

[jmcshane]

Hi, I wonder can anyone help !!!!! One of the guys here has "lost" the design centre and properties dialog boxs, and I can't the life of me figure out how to get them back.
She is using Autodesk Map 5. The command line shows that the command is called,
but they just don't appear. Any ideas ??

[Steve_Bennett]

They may have been dragged off the interface & are not visible now. Try clicking in the upper right coner on the square in between the X & _ to restore down & then try activating the command.

[jmcshane]

Cheers Steve,
I have tried all that, but still to no avail and its true when they say that
you don't know what you've got till its gone. This poor lady has to revert to using the
change command.
Is there a way of unloading and reloading dialog box's ????

[Mike.Perry]

Hi

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

ID: TS73099 - Diagnose and fix problems that prevent display of Properties window

Have a good one, Mike

[jmcshane]

Wow, "knowledge really is power..................."

Cheers Mike,

Have tried all that, but I'm afraid its the last line that is the only course of action left

"The product installation may have become corrupted. To resolve this problem, uninstall and reinstall the product. See related solutions for more information about uninstalling and reinstalling the product."

Thanks everybody for all the help.

John

[Wanderer]

Wow, "knowledge really is power..................."

Cheers Mike,

Have tried all that, but I'm afraid its the last line that is the only course of action left

"The product installation may have become corrupted. To resolve this problem, uninstall and reinstall the product. See related solutions for more information about uninstalling and reinstalling the product."

Thanks everybody for all the help.

John

just a thought, don't know how much it's worth since the more knowledgable people in here didn't suggest it... but, are any of the other dialog boxes not showing up also, or just those two?

[jmcshane]

Hi Melanie,

All the rest of the dialog box's are showing up fine.

I have a lisp routine which sets up all those variables and that is the first thing
I make people run whenever they come with a problem and it generally works. But this time I'm baffled as to what happened.
On further investigation, I have found out that our IT guy was in at the weekend changing
a network switch, and he maintains that AutoCad is very sensitive network "stuff".

I'm just going to give him the good news and tell that he can reinstall Autocad on her machine.

Cheers

John

[lance.81922]

Hi -- I have done quite a bit of work with "disappearing" (i.e., dragged off the screen) command line windows and toolbars, so think I can help you out here. Pardon my "density" but I don't know the specifics of Map. It would help if I knew whether the info is stored in the registry (as in AutoCAD up to 2002) or in a file (AutoCAD 2004 and later).

Basically, the size and position of dialog boxes (and toolbars) are stored somewhere on the system as numeric values. Since the values start from zero at the top of the screen and zero on the left edge, the process is really to find the values that are NOT in the range of the size of the screen. In other words, on a 1024x768 screen, a box whose top is at 770 is off screen below the window, and one whose left side is a large negative number is off to the left.

The good news is that you can go in and edit these numbers. I have writted VB programs to restore the values (for the command line window and for toolbars) automatically, but you can do it manually. The bad news is that I don't know how or where Map stores the values. If this was AutoCAD I could tell you.

[jmcshane]

HHMMMMM
Could you tell me how you would do this in Autocad. ????

[lance.81922]

I just went digging to find out where the info is on the DesignCenter ("Centre") and Properties dialogs. I was able to find the Position key in the registry that dictates where the box is, but have not figured out the Properties dialog because it doesn't work the same way as the DC one.

What I did was to look at an AutoCAD 2002 installation because it is (I think) the closest to Map 5. I can't be sure, but you should be able to find something analogous to what I'm describing.

WARNING**WARNING**WARNING**WARNING** This is a Registry editing job ("hack"). I cannot guarantee the outcome or your safety if you do not do this correctly. The usual MAJOR cautions apply -- I'd recommend that you save your work, or at least print it before you do it so you can get back and undo it if you don't get the results you expect.
WARNING**WARNING**WARNING**WARNING**

OK. If you're familiar with REGEDIT, you need to find what's called "AcadDC" under HKey_Local_Machine\Software\Autodesk. On an AutoCAD 2002 installation it's at
HKey_Local_Machine\Software\Autodesk\AutoCAD\R15.0\ACAD-xxx:xxx\AutodeskApps\AcadDC\History\DesignCenter\Last State so I think you can find something similar. Under that key, the value is the one called Position. There are four numbers following "Position=" . They represent the X value of the Left side of the dialog, the Y value of the Top of the dialog, the Width of the dialog, and the Height, in that order. On my system with 1024x768 resolution, the values are "283 110 299 501" at the moment. The deal here is that Left should be somewhere on screen (for me, between 0 and 1024), and Left+Width must be less than 1024. The same is true for Top (between 0 and 768) and for Top+Height (less than 768 on MY screen). I'm going to bet that on the "bad" system, some of these things will not be true. You will thus need to change the numbers so that they obey the rules I've described. BE SURE that you use numbers that make sense with your screen resolution. On a 640x480 screen, for instance, the dialog would be partly off the screen with those numbers.

If you are not comfortable with editing the Registry, DON'T. Find someone who is, or just don't mess with it. If you're comfortable, you may be able to avoid a reinstall.

Maybe if I can find the time I'll locate the info for Properties. I know the app is AcadOPM but can't find the dialog box data.