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The Scenario (The Verifiable Sync Problem) To unify standards, IT usually maps the CAD Support Path to a network drive (Z:\CAD_Standards) or OneDrive. But as a veteran CAD Manager recently pointed out to us: "The problem with shared drives has never really been just file availability—it’s knowing that everyone is actually running the same approved environment and being able to verify that without manually checking individual machines." The Legacy Approach Live cloud paths are fragile (if the internet drops on a construction site, CAD freezes). Furthermore, network drives offer zero observability. You can only "pray" your team's AutoCAD synced properly, leading to massive version fragmentation. The Modern Solution (Cloud-Managed Local Sandbox) This exact feedback validates why VedaCAD abolishes live network drives in favor of a Cloud-Managed Local Sandbox. All configs and plugins are pushed to a secure cache on the user's local C: drive, ensuring native speed and an Offline Grace Period if the internet drops on-site. The cloud's only job is to orchestrate and verify the version delivery. When you patch a .DLL plugin, VedaCAD uses a .bak renaming trick to bypass the Windows File Lock, silently hot-swapping the new payload in the background. Meanwhile, the CAD Manager gets a centralized dashboard showing the exact sync adherence of every physical terminal globally. Absolute observability.

The Scenario (The Plugin Avalanche) As AI copilots dramatically lower the barrier to coding, engineering teams are rapidly accumulating custom plugins routines. Suddenly, you’re stuffing dozens or even 100+ plugins into AutoCAD's APPLOAD Startup Suite. The result? AutoCAD takes minutes to launch. Different plugins fight over the same keyboard aliases. The Legacy Approach The traditional monolithic approach forces every plugin into the boot sequence. When an alias conflict occurs, CAD managers have to manually debug source code across dozens of workstations, disrupting drafting workflows. The Modern Solution (Demand-Loading Proxy) We recently had a veteran developer put VedaCAD through a massive stress test, which validated exactly why we built a Demand-Loading Proxy. Instead of loading 100 physical binaries at boot, VedaCAD's microkernel registers lightweight proxy hooks in memory. The actual physical binary evaluates into memory only at the exact millisecond the user types the command alias. Whether you manage 20 or 300 plugins, your CAD startup memory footprint remains exactly 0%. For pure function libraries that don't require command aliases, VedaCAD utilizes a "System Library" silent load mechanism. The platform establishes strict Alias Hegemony—ensuring the custom tools you deploy work flawlessly without overlap.

Have you ever used MATCHPROP to make one object look like another, but it still did not turn out right? I've often had to use MATCHPROP to change certain properties of an object, and while it does copy many properties like layer, color, linetype, and lineweight, it cannot copy all properties, so the objects are no longer identical For example, text can have a different height, and dimension objects can have different dimension-styles. When this happens, I usually go to the specific style or property of the object that is different, rather than using MATCHPROP over-and-over again. Has MATCHPROP ever done something unexpected for you?

As I mentioned in the other thread, I do not see any real usefulness for the way I work for BURST. I just can see any real need to explode any blocks with attributes, it's simple enough to alter the attributes, with code even easier. I am sure there is a way to convert them to text without exploding the block.

I added a note in the file where to change to keep PowerShell open. ; ---------------------------------------------------------- ; Wait until PowerShell finishes. ; ---------------------------------------------------------- (vlax-invoke-method shell "Run" cmd 0 ; <=== Change 0 to 1 if you want PowerShell to stay open. :vlax-true ) (vlax-release-object shell) ) ) I was running some tests at work to see if there was a method to determine if PowerShell was blocked to give a message... (princ "\nPowerShell access is blocked.") (princ "\nPowerShell access is allowed.")) Right now all I get on the commandline is... error: Automation Error. Description was not provided. Though I had to get to some of my "paid to do" work done yesterday. This is probably above my pay grade. I just realized who the OP is, a big time Guru over at Autodesk forums and AUGI.

I've actually used the attached lisp function BurstAttrBlock to run through a bunch of dwgs looking for a specific (non dynamic) block with attributes to convert them to text using accoreconsole. BurstAttrBlock.lsp

@GLAVCVS thanks for the feedback. I assume to use a single Powershell session you would have to run a batch file that launches Powershell first before starting autocad? Then when autocad closes or crashes out that session of Powershell also closes.

Yes: as @SLW210 says, it seems to work well. On the other hand: Have you considered having the script written only if it does not already exist in the expected directory, and keeping PowerShell running from the initial load? This would make the dialog box load faster on subsequent calls. In this regard, the script check/creation could be done when the code is loaded. This would also improve the speed of the first execution slightly.

Have you ever received a drawing where a block contains attribute text. You need to edit the text as normal objects?of exploding the block with EXPLODE and losing the attribute values BURST can be useful. BURST breaks the block into objects while preserving the attribute values as text. For example if you have a title block or equipment tag with attributes and need to make edits BURST can save some extra work. Just remember that after bursting the result is no longer a block. Do you use BURST, for attribute blocks. Do you normally handle them another way?

I think AI is definitely part of the reason, but probably not the whole story. A lot of questions that used to become forum threads can now be answered quickly with ChatGPT or Copilot, especially when the problem is a small piece of code or a common error. The interesting part is exactly what you mentioned: when the AI-generated solution fails, people still need somewhere to ask a human who understands the bigger context. AI can produce working-looking code very quickly, but debugging someone else's real project is a different problem. I also think newer users are less attached to forums than they used to be. Many will try a search, ask an AI, or post in a Discord/Reddit community before they ever find a specialist forum. So the drop in posts doesn't necessarily mean people have stopped needing help; the questions may simply be going elsewhere.

I'll probably do more tweaking, that's the 2nd version, I might go back to the first version.

Yes you can have custom buttons Ok_Cancel_Width. Have to go back to my R12 paper manual for details.

Nice job on the vector images. Like the highlite option.

@BIGALOr another option would be to provide a button to click on so that the selected item on the list box will open up into another dcl written on the fly with an Edit Box having a set edit_width attribute greater than the length of the selected item.

@Paul Li another way may be to check the strlen of the selected item in the list and do a child dcl that has correct width press Ok to keep else Cancel and go back to list.

@SLW210 Your revised version works beautifully and can now support older versions of AutoCAD...thanks a bunch!!!

I worked on the DCL after some inspiration from... Hopefully I didn't break anything. New version with nicer DCL in first post.

Yes, I was working on that for my home computer with 2000i. Since I had some home time today with AutoCAD 2000i, I did some updating to your code. Seems to work great with minimal testing. Here is my Test Code... ; ================================================================ ; Test command ; ================================================================ (defun c:SelectDWGs (/ files) (setq files (pl:getfiledps "Select DWG Files" (getvar "DWGPREFIX") "dwg" 1 ) ) (if files (progn (princ "\nSelected files:" ) (foreach file files (princ (strcat "\n" file ) ) ) ) (princ "\nNo files selected." ) ) (princ) ) pl_getfiledps_2000i.lsp

Yes, I've done this as well...just not as effective as having a scroll bar of course...

so does the pl:getfiledps function still run properly on those older AutoCAD versions?

Could you test if this PowerShell-p function would return nil on your powershell blocked computers? ; PowerShell-p function to check if powershell is available to run...Returns T if available (defun PowerShell-p (/ shell result) (setq shell (vlax-create-object "WScript.Shell") result (vl-catch-all-apply 'vlax-invoke-method (list shell 'Run "powershell.exe -NoProfile -Command \"exit 0\"" 0 T)) ) (vlax-release-object shell) (and (not (vl-catch-all-error-p result)) (= result 0) ) )

How are you executing the Chinese input? Like I stated, Autodesk claims you should use MText for multi-language. I just got into pinyin inputs so far and mostly I have been going over the pronunciations, though the characters are displayed. I have so far just been repeating that until I have a solid grasp. More or less it's a course where I am also brushing up on programming, they have a Chinese (simplified) and a Spanish (also English) pretty much for programming. My home computer has the Chinese switch, I'll have to see if I can do that at work.

@SLW210 Glad to hear that you are learning Chinese. I used the English full version of AutoCAD 2027, set LISPSYS to 2, and restarted the computer to test the code. The result is that Chinese input still doesn’t work. I tried to catch keyboard input: once a key is pressed, the program exits the grread loop and calls getstring. This makes Chinese input possible.

I have been looking at the discussion boards for the past month while working on my structural project for Penn Foster. It has been a great help but I was wondering if anyone could point me to a visual example of plate 3 (Section A)? I'm sure there is one somewhere in the boards but I have not been able to find it. I also don't need details, I am just a visual learner and I know for a fact the drawing I have made for this is completely wrong since the instructions are not clear to me. All of the plates after this seem to be based off of this one so I am struggling to go any further without a visual to see what I need to fix or how wrong exactly my drawing is. Any visual for this plate would be of great help! Thank you!

Here's a simple workaround. When you get a drawing from someone else, open a New drawing (from one of your templates). Xref their drawing into that one and Bind it as an insertion. That gives you a block, which you can edit to clean it up and then explode. If there's a scale problem, it will show up there. Voila! You have their drawing with all your settings applied.