Folder naming and allowable characters in folder names

[fletch97]

Greetings Fellow CAD Guru's -

I am having a problem in my office with people naming their folders properly. Besides following a company standard, my problem actually has to do with the introduction of symbols into a folder name. I have always known that spaces, dashes and underscores are common and do not seem to create problems, however other symbols seem to reek havoc in CAD. (%, #, etc...) First off, has anyone else come across this problem in their office? Is there any documentation stating what can, and cannot be used in a folder name that CAD is referencing? I'd like to send out an e-mail to my CAD staff with this info.......any help will be greatly appreciated.

Thank you!

[Buffeldrek]

hi there,
the symbols i traditionaly don't use in foldernames and filenaming are the following:


/ the “slash” is being used for folder identification on UNIX
\ the “backslash” is being used for folder identification MS DOS and WINDOWS
? wildcard symbol for Windows and AmigaOS
* asterix is a wildcard symbol for MS DOS and Windows
: the colon is reserved for drives (c annotations on windows
| Is used for software processes
“ is used to identify the beginning and end of filenames containing spaces
< used to direct input of data
> used to direct output of data
. filename seperator

[Mike.Perry]

Hi

What version of Windows do run your Autodesk products on ?

Does your company run a Windows network or something different ?

As long as directory paths / directory names / file names, contain only allowable / valid Windows characters for such items, you should not experience problems within Autodesk products.

Regardless, it is best to keep such things simple and avoid the use of unusual characters ( in my humble opinion ).

Have a good one, Mike

[fletch97]

Mike....

We are a typically windows environment here.....XP on all the workstations, etc..

Just an FYI of one problem we had here...

Someone had used the # symbol in a folder name and it cause major problems with the layer control of the xref's. I couldn't figure out why we were having so many problems until I removed the # symbol from the folder name and bam.....it worked perfect after that! This one drove me nuts!

I'd like to assembly a constructive e-mail of do's and don'ts....I was hoping that there may be something out there already created for this....save me some time.

Thanks!

[robert.1.hall72202]

I would not think to check the folder naming conventions. Good call. I have seen many computer kinks in my day. I do know that you need to be careful with the folders that are located in the windows profiles (ie enu16/blah blah). At some point the entire folder tree can lead to a very lengthy shortcut that some programs might not like.

[michael.12445]

We have a Windows network, but we have had problems with spaces in filenames of drawings that are used as external references. Certain operations - I don't remember now specifically which ones - don't work properly if there are spaces. As a result, we now avoid them in our file names.

Michael Evans
Togawa Smith Martin Residential, Inc.

[fletch97]

File names??? My problems are focusing around folder naming.

Even so, I have never seen or heard of any problems with spaces in file or folder naming.

More details will be needed to assist you with that one.

[Mike.Perry]

Someone had used the # symbol in a folder name and it cause major problems with the layer control of the xref's. I couldn't figure out why we were having so many problems until I removed the # symbol from the folder name and bam.....it worked perfect after that! This one drove me nuts!

Hi

From the AutoCAD Online Help File [F1]...

A layer name can include up to 255 characters: letters, digits, and the special characters dollar sign ($), hyphen (-), and underscore (_). Use a reverse quote (`) before other special characters so that the characters are not interpreted as wild-card characters. Layer names cannot include blank spaces.

Though some of the above is no longer correct.

ID: TS19075 - Special characters that are not allowed in layer names

Have a good one, Mike