Open Discussion: List Your Favorite System Variables

What the title says. Please inform the reasoning as to why the system variable is valuable to you if you can.

• CTAB - Useful in FIELD with Layouts for titleblock sheet numbering.
  
• OFFSETGAPTYPE - Multiple offset settings.
  

Just a couple gems I really like. Any other takers to this thread? Hope we can all benefit from this!

PICKFIRST and FILEDIA.

Why? Because without those two variables constantly getting messed up, visitors to CADTutor would probably be cut in half! LoL

Ah, good ones! And the most common.

LAYERDLGMODE

I like the legacy layer manager. (note: With 2014 you must have that set to 1 to use the new layer merge.)

WHIPTHREAD - Set to three and delegate duties to more cores.

What do settings 4-15 do? I can't find any answers anywhere.

OSNAPHATCH is another.

I get a lot of architectural floorplans where the ceiling grid is a hatch. This allows me to snap my diffusers easily without having to explode hatches in the architectural background.

SETVAR should be on the list too.

ACADLSPASDOC is another.

From help:

0 - Loads acad.lsp into just the first drawing opened in a session

 

1 - Loads acad.lsp into every drawing opened

DIMASSOC is a good one too.

From help:

0 - Creates exploded dimensions. There is no association between the various elements of the dimension. The lines, arcs, arrowheads, and text of a dimension are drawn as separate objects.

 

1 - Creates non-associative dimension objects. The elements of the dimension are formed into a single object. If one of the definition points of the dimension moves, the dimension is updated.

 

2 - Creates associative dimension objects. The elements of the dimension are formed into a single object, and one or more definition points of the dimension are coupled with association points on geometric objects. If the association point on the geometric object moves, the dimension location, orientation, and value are updated.

Setting that to 0 on a coworkers machine could lead to some havoc.

SETVAR should be on the list too.

SETVAR is a command not a system variable.

WHIPTHREAD - Set to three and delegate duties to more cores.

 

What do settings 4-15 do? I can't find any answers anywhere.

I have my WHIPTHREAD set to 1:

When multithreaded processing is used for redraw operations (value 2 or 3), the order of objects specified with the DRAWORDER command is not guaranteed to be preserved for display, but is preserved for plotting.

Separately, WHIPTHREAD allows for an integer value much greater than 15... By my count, it's max is 32767 (not sure what anything above 3 does, but still):

(setq i 0)
(while (not (vl-catch-all-error-p
             (vl-catch-all-apply 'setvar (list 'whipthread i))
           )
      )
 (setq i (1+ i))
)

SETVAR is a command not a system variable.

Like a lot of System Variables, this Command stems from the LispFunction Method.

fullplotpath

peditaccept

osnapz

GEOMARKERVISIBILITY

modemacro

OSNAPZ.... good one! I use that a lot.

ATTDIA is a good one, especially for Attributed Blocks inserted from a Tool Palette.

_commandline [CONTROL + 9]

menubar

ltscale

cmleaderstyle

cursorsize

indexctl

mbuttonpan

mirrtext

orthomode

ribboncontextselect

... And one that is not so much a system variable (due to registry permissions at work), but a LispFunction Method paired with a Command Reactor for editing text entities, etc., is my CAPSLOCK plug-in.

base

....that it's heavy