AutoCAD Options - Profiles - To Network or not ?

I have a number of questions relating to the use of Profiles within AutoCAD.

What information do they contain ?

Please try to be as detailed as you can in any answers.

The reason I am asking is because, I would like to set up a company wide profile (.arg file) and have this run by default.

Now I am not sure whether this would need to be run for every drawing, or just every time AutoCAD is fired up. Any ideas ?

The .arg file that I would like to run across all machines, the only things I know for certain at the moment that I only want to 'load up' are everything that is contained within the Files Tab of the Options menu.

At this stage, I am not sure whether I wish to load up everything else that the .arg file may contain.

Is any of this possible ?

Another question too, is doing this setting myself up for a potential fall ?

As ever, your ideas, input, advice, and suggestions are more than welcome.

Thanks in advance.

I think this may be asking for trouble - although I would be happy to be proved wrong. I believe the profile is only loaded at startup, not at every drawing. A quick look at the arg file (using wordpad) shows that it is a list of registry entries so the registry may well be read with each drawing. The problem I see is that although you want the files tab to be consistant all the other bits are bundled in too. I would be very upset if I had to turn off the VT effects everytime if the "wrong" default was used in a profile.

I hope you can find a way of just loading the files tab as that would save me a lot of trouble! When I set up a new user I start with my own arg file but even this is fraught as some of the paths contain my login name and those folders become inaccesible when somebody else is logged on. If a more generic path could be substituted that would be a benifit.

Thanks for the heads-up Dave.

I just took a quick peak at my .arg file.

OMG, it contains soooo much rubbish that I know for sure I wouldn't want to transfer to all machines.

Whether it is possible to truncate any of it to the relevant parts I need is, I think, the crux of the question at hand.

Blue,

I have just had a play with the .arg

It seems possible to modify this in notepad to only contain the bits you wish to use, ie, the contents of the file tab, just need to make sure you include everything that is relevant.

Seems to work though, have just imported into CAD and is working fine, no explosions yet at least.

Alternatively, if you enforce that all users have a profile called ABC you could then right a registry fix to modify the files tab registries...

Cheers

I'm too busy (as usual) to play right now but do you know what happens to all the other sections if they are not in the arg file?

Thinking out loud I guess it's not really a problem. That is how we work anyway, isn't it? We modify an entry without ever recreating a new profile (at least that's how I work).

Seems very feasible (apart from maybe the ones under my name) to me now.

It seems to go back to the OOB settings, so importing part of a profile isn't really feasible, depending on how ofter you change/add paths to the profile.

I would guess a editing the registry would probably be the best method. Can't think of any alternatives right now...

Cheers

P.S. On second thoughts, a bit of clever scripting in VB, C#, etc. may get you what you want. If you force your users to have a profile call XXX, then you could script to then read the registries for profile XXX and add the registries that you want to the profile, then overwrite the original... feasible? I will have a look when I get some time, but not sure when I will have that much time on my hands.

Cheers

I may have found a way around using profiles to 'force' certain file support paths by using the setenv function.

When I am less busy, I shall try that out on a couple of machines, and report back here.

This may or may not help you!!

our office is on a network with cad 2008 on the network one user at a time until we see if it works out, we also have an .arg set up for each user or potential user containing basic info such as location of drawing tools and placement of certain tool bars so each user can load his or her profile and be comfortable within 2008 on a familiar workspace and the user loads his profile on a per drawing basis , the dwg stays the same just the workspace layout changes as far as I can see!!

cheers mate

I have a number of questions relating to the use of Profiles within AutoCAD.

 

What information do they contain ?

Please try to be as detailed as you can in any answers.

 

The reason I am asking is because, I would like to set up a company wide profile (.arg file) and have this run by default.

Now I am not sure whether this would need to be run for every drawing, or just every time AutoCAD is fired up. Any ideas ?

 

The .arg file that I would like to run across all machines, the only things I know for certain at the moment that I only want to 'load up' are everything that is contained within the Files Tab of the Options menu.

At this stage, I am not sure whether I wish to load up everything else that the .arg file may contain.

 

Is any of this possible ?

Another question too, is doing this setting myself up for a potential fall ?

 

As ever, your ideas, input, advice, and suggestions are more than welcome.

 

Thanks in advance.

Hi, I'm not sure if anyone suggested this but we have a standard profile that gets loaded on ewach "new" install

That will get the install all of the necessary pathes and the drafting setting that we think should be set on a new install; of course the user can change them as they like later

Now, as far as the support pathes, I have a few other methods as well.

I have a VBA project that I did sometime ago that will set the support pathes and I also have a VBScript that can simply be double clicked or possibly ran on startup that wll write the paths directly to the registry.

I sent my pal a bit of scritping code last week that allowed him to globally change all users plotter/pc3 and pmp pathes.

So, there are several ways to scim the cat

I think company profiles are great for "fresh" installs

M

We have set up all our standards by virtue of Palettes. Of course we have our office standards but then we have client standards, even our other office has different standards. So we created palettes to control the standards. What we found out is that this makes the users almost twice as fast because of ease of use and the having all the drawing being consistent.

Ok so now we have about 24 Palette groups. We needed to figure out how to not only manage them but how could we switch from on to the other and have all the users still remain consistent. Profiles did this and more. By creating a profile for each client, we were able to control not only which palette was available, but we were able to control things like Plot Style availability, Sheet Set Templates, Font mappings, among a few others.

Each profile was created to accomodate only that client. It was saved as the client name on a "Cad Standard" read only mapped drive on the network to ensure no user could make changes to it. Then in the options profiles tab in AutoCAD, you just import it and set it current. It is true that this copies the profile to the local drive but if a change was made to the networked profile, we just send out a broadcast email tell the users to import the updated profile.

So far this has worked like a charm and with the FULL use of the Sheet Set Manager, we have maxed out our users productivity relative to their skill sets.

Hey Zen

Man, you are right on the button as far as I am concerned.

Profiles are a great way to handle the scenario that you described.

I am assuming by pallettes, you mean menus?

Zen, this may help you out.

Are you familiar with VBScripting?

If not, it is very easy; take this code that I posted below, copy it into a new text (.txt) file, then do a saveas, then name the file and save it as a .vbs file.

After you do that, you will be able to double click the file (script) and it will open ACAD, import the profile that you want active, then it will close ACAD.

I did not do any code to check if ACAD is already open, I could if you wanted but if your user has ACAD closed and runs this, it will do what you described.

All you need to do is change the file path and Profname

Then I would test it (of course) on your machine first.

I use a profile called "Test" just to try things out.

If you like it and want something else added, just give me a holler

Hope it helps

ML

Dim Acad,Preferences,WshNetwork,Username
Dim FilePath,Profname

Set Acad = CreateObject("Autocad.Application")
Set WshNetwork = CreateObject("WScript.Network")
Set Preferences = Acad.Preferences

Acad.Visible = True

Username = WshNetwork.UserName

FilePath = "C:\Documents and Settings\" & Username & "\My  Documents\TestProf\" 
Profname = "Test"

Preferences.Profiles.ImportProfile Profname, FilePath & Profname & ".arg" , True

'MsgBox "The Profile " & Profname & " has been sucessfully imported", vbInformation

Acad.Quit

That is an excellent idea. When I mentioned Palettes, I meant Tool Palettes. [CTRL]3. We have put all our standard text by scale along with the matching dimensions on a palette tab, Line work alread set to the correct layer, color and linetype broken out in the different areas we use like existing boundary lines, ie ROW, PL, CL, easements etc. We have title blocks with attributes on a palettes so the user only has to drag and drop and bam, there it is. We have grouped the tabs in each palette so it appears there are many many palettes when in fact it is one large one. Each client gets their own palette structure.

The palettes are controlled by the profiles. When everything is set for the client, just path the "Tool Palette File Locations" to the clients standards folder on your network in the "Options" Dialog Box in the "Files" Tab. Then just save the Profile as the Clients name and there you go.

Try it. I am going to try your script and see if I can't get the script as part of each users logon script so each morning it refreshes the profiles.

Thanks so much for that!

Zen

Yeah I think it would be excellent if it would test to see if AutoCAD was open. Also we tend to run two sessions at a time as well. Is there a what to check if two sessions are running and modify both sessions?

Also, how do you set a perticular Profile current using VBA or VB Script?

Hi Zen

I'm sorry, I somehow missed your reply.

I changed e-mail addresses, so I may not have seen it.

So, is that script working for you?

I'm glad that you like that idea

OK, you have few questions here....

I have a nice little VBA Project that I created, it will return the profiles on your machine in a listbox, then which ever one you click on, it will set that profile current. It is really good if (like me) you switch profiles a lot.

I can send that to you if you'd like? Also, I can incorporate that into a VBScript if you'd like?

You run two sessions of Vaniila CAD at the same time, using the same profiles?

Checking to see if ACAD is open should be easy.

Also, check this out ZEN

I have a script that will write your paths directly to the registry via script. It is very cool but the key here is to set which profile you want to update to active first.

You would also need to tweak it to your paths..

So, there are a number of ways to skim the cat; if you tell me what you'd like, I can hook it up.

In this case, it would be cool to externally set the profile you want to update as active, then externally, with a script, update the paths in the registry.

So, I will give you that VBA project that I did for profiles.

Let me know if you have any querstions.

If you want to work on that script, let me know

I should be able to turn it over fairly quickly

Mark

Zen,

I tried attaching that VBA Project but I don't think it worked.

Let me know if there is another was I can get it (.dvb file) to you

Mark

Zen,

I tried attaching that VBA Project but I don't think it worked.

 

Let me know if there is another was I can get it (.dvb file) to you

 

Mark

Mark - thanks for the help on this. I sent you a provate messate with my email contact address. I have some ideas that we can collaborate on and who knows where that might go.

Thanks and I look forward to talking with you.

Zen

Hi Zen

I sent you an e-mail with the project

I would have shared it so that others can use it but it doesn't look possible

That is ok; if others are interested, they will ask, right?

M

I wouldn't mind seeing what you have come up with, please.

I too would like to see some example arg files. I am trying to setup a network "workspace" with some luck. Like mentioned, we have multiple clients so I'll need multiple profiles to point to different client based files and folders.

I've been doing this for years with that "other" CAD software and understand its inner workings very well. It has been a steep learning curve trying to figure out the equivalent on this side of the CADD world.