Replacing a drawing

[unheeding]

Hey guys,

 

i have to give this assignment to my teacher and he takes off points if you spent a certain amount of time on the drawing (he's going to use time command). what i need to do is take everything on my file (model AND layouts) and put it on another file where my time (date created, spent time, editing time ect.) is perfect. i know that my file will count that as the "last time modified" but it won't matter.

 

So basically i am going to delete what is on the "good time" file and replace it with everything from the other one. How do i do that?? In the end it has to be the same drawing with the same layouts but with different time/date settings.

 

Please don't tell me it's cheating i'm actually a good student, but this counts for a huge part of my semester and i really need to get the best grade i can!

 

THANKS

[Dadgad]

Welcome to the forum.

How isn't it cheating?

Expect a call from the department of Ends & Means.

 

If you are sure you want to try your hand at hacking the system,

you would do well to keep the original intact, and try your prestidigitation on a COPY.

 

Have you tried using the TIME command, and reading the commandline prompts, you might learn something.

Hell, I'm reasonably adept with some of this stuff, and I learned something!

Do you know how to use F2 to expand your commandline history window?

 

Understand that if you fail, the added time spent trying to subvert the

system would be added to the clock (which is one reason why you don't want to work on the original).

 

It's a pity you don't know a little more about the half dozen Autocad SYSTEM VARIABLES which are prefixed by TD.

Edited September 14, 2012 by Dadgad

[ReMark]

Put your cell phone away and do the drawing over. It should take less time.

[Tiger]

I can't see my a simple Erase on the "good timed" file in both Model and Layout and then Copy-Paste from the original file doesn't work?

 

And yes, it still is cheating - call a duck a duck, even if it really really want to be a swan.

[ReMark]

My personal opinion: I think it is a bad idea to be telling a student how to circumvent the system. It is unfair to his classmates who did not cheat.

[Organic]

My personal opinion: I think it is a bad idea to be telling a student how to circumvent the system. It is unfair to his classmates who did not cheat.

 

Marking a CAD drawing on the amount of time the file has been open is a stupid idea in the first place. The AutoCad timing function is not exactly accurate if you create new drawings based upon old drawing files or have multiple drawings open at once all day long.

 

Working efficiently in the workplace might be important but the OP is still learning and in my opinion shouldn't be marked on efficiency, but more on understanding and quality.

[Tiger]

My personal opinion: it's a stupid criteria from the professor. If a student spends a lot of time on a drawing perfecting it and perfecting it and perfecting it, he is also learning in the process and should not be penalised for it.

 

ReMarks suggestion, to do the drawing again when you know how to do it, is also a form of cheating or circumventing the system.

 

And everything said here is based on a loosly formulate question by the student. None here knows exactly how the teacher have framed the question and we really can't know the justification of using the time-function. It might be an excercise of commands that the students should know backwards.

[JD Mather]

Tell your instructor I have been teaching various CAD programs for 18 years (and before that I spent 15 years in industry) - I have never used time as a grading criteria.

As far as your question - I suggest you simply start over from scratch and you should show a decent (fast time now that you have experience).

Turn that in and a printout of this thread.

 

The time factor will come in when you take an examination. You should be concentrating on developing your skills, not on trying to figure out how to finagle an idealized time figure.

If you know what you are doing on the exam, you will have plenty of time. If you don't, you won't.

 

When you show your instructor this thread he/she is likely to respond that fast production is important consideration in the real world.

True.

But you are in learning stage, not production stage. Concentrate on quality. In my experience those who produce the best quality are also amoung the fastest in the end.

I have many who rush through an assigment and produce work that has to be re-worked. When you learn how to produce quality, how the program is supposed to work and how the drawings are correct - speed comes as a natural function of the quality process.

[ReMark]

Let's ask the professor.

 

Would you rather a student do a drawing over a second or even third time to see if he/she can create it more efficiently OR take all the time in the world then find a way to make it look like it took less time?

[Dadgad]

By the OP's own admission, it is clear that it is cheating.

Relative merits aside of the instructor's decision to factor in, or not, time spent to complete the drawing;

if that is the system which is in place, and the standard to which all of the other students in the class

are being held, then their is an unfair advantage being sought.

 

I'm with ReMark and the OP's classmates on this one, on purely ethical grounds.

 

All of the variables to which I alluded in my post are read only, except for one which does not affect the create date.

I was sort of sending the OP on an instructive wild goose chase, net gain new knowledge.

 

It does sound like a take home exam, if you will, based on how much of the semester grade it will represent.

[rkent]

unheeding, did you know that you can use a drawing file (.dwg) as a template file?

[Dadgad]

Kludgemeister!

[unheeding]

Dadgag: what i meant by "please don't tell me it's cheating" was "don't judge me, please help me if know you how to". Besides, you would be teaching me something i would not have known otherwise!

 

ReMark: i know you can call it cheating since it's part of the teacher's criteria, but since i think it's an unfair criteria in the first place, i wouldn't feel bad about it. As for your suggestion of starting all over, a) we're talking 30+ hours here, and b) i'm afraid he's going to check the created date too, and sanction consequently.

 

thanks to the other posters who agree that marking efficiency is being too strict towards a (beginner) student

 

rkent: yes i'm aware of that option, but that would set the date created to today, class has been on this assigment for awhile now.

 

i read something interesting somewhere else though, maybe someone here can validate this to be the best option. Something about tweaking time in .dxf file with wordpad? sounded like exactly what i need here... but i didn't read more details about it so i would really appreciate it if someone here can tell me how!

 

by the way, english is my 3rd language, sorry if somethings aren't clear or well written!

 

THANKS for your responses!

[rkent]

unheeding, Time to think about where the software gets its date and time from.

[ReMark]

30 hours the first time. Should take you much less the second time don't you think? This assumes that you got smarter and quicker as time progressed and you got further into the drawing.

 

Is there a way to change both the time it took and the date? Yes, as a matter of fact there is. But I cannot, in all fairness, tell you how to do it. Sorry.

 

I'm sure you are not alone in your sentiments about the time constraint imposed upon you by your instructor. When you return to class you can ask him what the purpose of that was supposed to be. You weren't being paid to do the drawing and it shouldn't matter if you took 31 hours and someone else took 25. I would award the grade you got based upon the end result (how did it look on-screen or when plotted) vs. the time you spent.

[ReMark]

unheeding, Time to think about where the software gets its date and time from.

 

Might as well say it outright at this point although if he were a little older, like some of us, this would have been his first thought.

[unheeding]

unheeding, Time to think about where the software gets its date and time from.

 

i actually tried that yesterday before i even posted this thread, but it somehow messed up my "editing time" giving it a negative value! something like -900 minutes...

[JD Mather]

...thanks to the other posters who agree that marking efficiency is being too strict towards a (beginner) student

 

by the way, english is my 3rd language

 

Your (written) English is far better than most of my students who have been writing "English" for 12 or 13 years by the time they get into my class.

 

I for one didn't say it was too strict. If I wasn't clear - I think it is just plain counter-productive to the goals of a class (learn how to do it correctly). I worked in industry for several years before I started college at the age of 27. I had real-world experience in many of the topics my professors were trying to teach. Whenever I came across something like this I would go out of my way to make such criteria meaningless. For example, if faced with the same situation I would make sure all of my drawings were the best in the class and purposefully make sure the time shown was wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy beyond what the "teacher" expected.

After working as a machinist for 8 years I was in a Machine Tool class where the instructor added something like a point for each minute written tests were turned in before the class end. (I forget the exact criteria - but it was something similar, but you did have to have something completed.) I would wait till the end of class to turn my test in even though I was done in 10 minutes (on a 50-minute test) with perfect answers. On one (national) test I even refused to answer two "political" questions and still scored in the 99 percentile (in other words, nobody scored better than I did).

 

Attach your finished assignments here and others will make suggestions for improvements. All your work will be perfect. You will learn how do them correctly. And be sure to spend triple the time the instructor is expecting to see.

[JD Mather]

.. something like -900 minutes...

 

That's what I would turn in, just make sure it is absolutely correct.

[unheeding]

Might as well say it outright at this point although if he were a little older, like some of us, this would have been his first thought.

 

dude. Was i rude to you at some point? does a cheat (if you want to call me that) get to you to the extent that you have to be such a d*ck about it? Jesus. You could've just not contributed to the thread if this kind of "cheat" is too extreme for your ethics... You know, in the end, i just asked the community to teach me something, what i do with it shouldn't affect you at all, i just told you the purpose so you could better understand my request. Hell, i'm not asking you how to arm a bomb ffs.

 

JD Mather: haha thank you sir for you suggestions and advice, will keep in mind! Found what i wanted though! I think my drawing is flawless by the way. I'm sure i would've liked you as a teacher

 

rkent: thanks for helping, that was my backup plan if i wouldn't have found the solution i was looking for!

 

heres what i did (if anyone wants to know) - I DXFout my drawing, as well as my other .dwg which contained the desired date and time settings. i opened both .dxf files in wordpad, and copied the TDCREATE, TDUCCREATE, etc... values (which are in Julian date format) from the "good date/time file" and replaced them in the "finished assignment drawing". then i just loaded the dxf file in autocad, and it resulted as my complete assignment with the time and date settings i wanted

 

thank you all for your quick responses!