"... is currently in use by:" --> Can I close an opened document on a collegues PC?

Hi guys,

Since my collegue (=boss) tends to keep drawings open when having his weekend or day off, I experience the trouble not to be able to open that drawing. I'll have to make some calls and the drawings are then closed by him from a remote desktop. Of course this is the best way besides some education he desperately needs. It gets a bit nastier when he's not near a PC, then I will have to skip that drawing. Btw: I am not allowed to log in my bosses PC. So what to do... (I know what but what if he won't listen...)

So I had some thoughts to build in a small routine on his computer that would close the drawing when I say so. Be kind with me, I do not want to develop some evil lisp. Maybe we can exchange thoughts and then decide wether it is a solution or not.

My restrictions would be that a closed drawing is saved with a new name like "drawingname_force-closed_date.dwg". Also an alert that says "drawingname.dwg" was forced to close on "date" by "login". The bigger part I believe I can write my own but I have no experience on how to make a lisp react on input from over the network...

Any help / thoughts are appreciated.

Kind regards,

MarcoW.

pull the plug out the wall?

oh sorry you're trying not to be evil!

I believe there would be way too many issues in writing an access program.

What if the computer is in sleep / hibernate mode or password protected?

If you have administrative access to the server you could log him off from there.

If you have physical access to the router you could unplug his cable.

You could open the drawing in read only mode the do a save as till he returns.

You could make a giant post-it note and glue it to his screen saying, “close out of any drawings”.

pull the plug out the wall?

oh sorry you're trying not to be evil!

Right!

What if the computer is in sleep / hibernate mode or password protected?

Okay, that's a hard one...

If you have administrative access to the server you could log him off from there.

Not an option.

If you have physical access to the router you could unplug his cable.

I might try this... had not thought of that! The drawing will be accessible I believe... but in it's last saved state.

You could open the drawing in read only mode the do a save as till he returns.

This is the same as the previous option.

You could make a giant post-it note and glue it to his screen saying, “close out of any drawings”.

His screen has no more room! Maybe time for a new 42" screen?

Besides these "physical" actions ... the idea of closing the drawing "by remote" isn't that strange I believe.

I figured the following: what if...

1. when opening a drawing, write a *.txt file in the same folder

2. when closing the drawing, this file is deleted.

3. During session, "every 3 minutes", there is a check wether the contents of the textfile matches a string, like the loginname.

4. If the contents of the file is matching, nothing happens

5. If it does not match, it saves änd closes.

So basically, if the drawing itself becomes idle (is that correct english) for more than 3 minutes it is automatically saved and closed.

Not a completely brilliant idea but it is a start I suppose.

Let's have a brainstorm...

Educating your boss on the downside to keeping a drawing open on his computer and then leaving for the weekend seems a far easier solution than trying to come up with a program.

So basically, if the drawing itself becomes idle (is that correct english) for more than 3 minutes it is automatically saved and closed.

If this is programatically feasible then I feel this is a great idea. The only thing I'd change would be the time before the drawing is saved and closed. It takes me at least 10 minutes to walk to the nearest water fountain and fill my bottle up and make it back to my desk. I would probably suggest something like 30 minutes. However this is all relative. If 3 minutes is good for you then so be it.

Educating your boss on the downside to keeping a drawing open on his computer and then leaving for the weekend seems a far easier solution than trying to come up with a program.

Unfortunately if his boss is like mine, then he really is computer illiterate and I could probably teach a monkey proper CAD procedures before I could teach him, lol. That's what you get when you take someone with a business degree from like 1970 and make him in charge of a CAD startup group. Don't get me started.

Lonnie

I was intrigued so I started to play around and figured out a possible way to achieve this.

Regular lisp does not have the ability to continuously monitor in the background and let the user work in AutoCAD. OpenDCL has a function called dcl_delayedinvoke that could be used to accomplish this task.

I played around with it and got it to monitor acad with the use of an editor reactor.

That being said I’m not sure about all of the issues involved with monitoring acad to get the program to trigger so it will take some experimenting on your part to figure out all the issues.

First you will need OpenDCL, it’s a free program and I love it. You can download it from opendcl.com.

Once you have the program written it will need to be put on the other computer and loaded every time a drawing is opened.

If you are not familiar with opendcl , it has a small learning curve but I’ll be glad to help and there are others that will help also.

Here is what I suggest for the program.

On you computer you will need a small program to write a file to a specific folder and location on the server. This file will be formatted with the Date,time and path of the drawing in question.

The program on the other computer will check for this file every X minuets if there are no active commands being issued from the user. If the program finds the file it will read it, and if the date and time and path info are correct then it will perform whatever action you need.

This is something you really need to put a lot of thought and trial into before you put it on the Boss’s computer.

Every time the boss does something like this pull the plug on his machine and crash his hard drive. After six or seven times perhaps the computer won't boot up because the hard drive has been damaged. That should teach him a lesson he won't forget because he'll have to spend money to fix it. When wallets get whacked wisdom is finally achieved.

The vast majority of the responses you're getting do not address the root cause of the problem.

What are the ramifications of putting a drawing monitoring program on your boss's computer without his knowledge? Or, did you plan on telling him what you are going to do and why?

What are the ramifications of putting a drawing monitoring program on your boss's computer without his knowledge?

I would guess the ramifications of putting an unauthorized, quasi-illegal monitoring program on the boss' PC would be equal to deliberately sabotaging it. Perhaps either would get you fired.

Lonnie

That's about the way I see it too. So my suggestion would be at the very least talk to the boss and explain the "benefit" of installing this program, if it can be done, because the fact that a drawing he knows was open on his computer when he left the office was closed out, opened by someone else, worked on and then saved without his knowledge may cause him to rethink his decision about keeping the other CAD operator employed. Catch my drift?

I definitely see your point. In fact if the only way to accomplish this is to install something on anyone else's computer then this is a path I would not take.

BTW, in my situation the boss doesn't use AutoCAD so he's not the problem. I have a couple of "elder" designers who tell me they are used to working for places where there were not enough licenses to go around so they got used to leaving AutoCAD running whenever they got up from their computers. Since that's not the case here, I've explained why they shouldn't leave drawings open over night but for some it just doesn't matter. Unless there is a definitive punishment hanging over them, some people just don't care enough to follow the rules.

On a side note, I'm glad today is Friday

Sometimes you just want to slap someone upside the head. Twice.

TGIF...yep, I hear ya.

@ all: thanks for the reply.

ReMark:

When wallets get whacked wisdom is finally achieved.

This is definitely thrue , shall I take this sentence to be my signature on CADTutor?

As for the replies so far they all are regarding to the possible trouble I would get when hacking around my bosses computer. I am well aware of that but there is nothing to worrie because all my actions will be dicussed before, he will know and he will approve. This will not be the problem for shure.

If I may be so free to say, do not reply anymore about the do's / don'ts ... I am more interested in a possible solution.

@ JohnM:

I am running my programs on ObjectDCL, you probably know how to see this compared to ObjectDCL. TBH: let's not discuss about those 2....

The delayedinvoke function is not available in ObjectDCL so I will have to figure something out....

What you suggest is kinda like my idea, having a file created upon opening a dwg. Then, when closing it, is removed.

If the dwg is opened there is a textfile that contains "maybe even nothing"...

Let's suppose my collegue is in a dwg and the textfile that was created is removed from over the network by me.

Somehow AutoCAD should notice this and tell to do something else it will save & close.

I have searched for reactors but have no clue if a reactor exists that reacts on external files.

Maybe you guys are right: I should teach 'em... it is by far the easiest and best solution...

Is there any chance a drawing your co-worker or boss is currently working on gets closed right before their eyes and they go "WTF just happened?" The law of unintended consequences has to be considered here.

Hey ReMark, you seem to be here all the time .

As I said you all are right, but I am not willing to do illegal or something that is not discussed with my boss. I do not want to be rude to you so please take no offence but let's not talk about "my boss / collegues" opinion. Usually there are opened numereous windows of excel, some word documents and the rest like the mail program, some calculation software and last but not least 1 AutoCAD window. But in this window, do some "control+tab" and you'll see 10 to 15 dwg's... They are opened all day. But as long as I can ask them to colse there is no problem, but when I am alone at the office things get nastier. I agree I should take some time and learn them not to behave like this. And maybe this is your point... that I just shouldn't do this.

Let me think about this over the weekend. Kind regards,

MarcoW.

I did think about it, I will try to make 'em understand before attempting to "kick one out of the session".

Thanks for the replies anyway.

Regards,

MarcoW.