Dork Side Tips: Very Valuable Variables & Commands

Well, this wraps up my recap of the Tips from the Dork Side, and the extra tips and commentary slipped within, I hope something has proven useful.

Very Valuable Variables                                                                          

I wish this were a fictional account, but, true story, I once saw someone asking a question on a social media network about how to bring back their missing File Open/Select File dialog. The reply was “That stupid thing happens all the time, you have to reinstall AutoCAD.” Imagine my look of horror. I couldn’t post “Just type FILEDIA!” fast enough. 

(This system variable can be changed by a crash, or by running a routine that suppresses the dialog but fails to turn it back on at the end.)

AutoCAD allows so many things to be controlled by System Variables, and it is hard to learn or recall more than a handful of them. I encourage you to poke around the help files and see what some of them do (start with the below list). 

And, if you’re experiencing weird behavior, just post your question in the AUGI forums, where you’ll get much better advice from experienced peers about the cause and solution than the poor guy mentioned above.

Have you tried…?

Here are some system variables you can look up and experiment with:

HPGAPTOL

IMAGEFRAME

MAXSORT

MTJIGSTRING

PEDITACCEPT

PUBLISHCOLLATE

UCSFOLLOW

VISRETAIN

XREFTYPE

And, if you have not used any of the commands in the below list, give them a try:

AECTOACAD

APPLOAD

ARRAY

DIMSPACE

FLATSHOT

LAYERSTATE

LAYMRG

MLEADER

PASTESPEC

RECOVERALL

RENAME

SETBYLAYER

SSM

TABLE

XLIST

I hope I have shown you something you hadn’t seen yet. If you have some favorite commands and methods of your own, please stop by the AutoCAD Tips and Tricks forum to share.