Default save to location in AutoCAD - Solved

[HCb]

Hello, I've been having fits with AutoCAD since I started using it almost two years ago. Whenever I hit Save for the first time on a drawing it would open the default Documents location instead of where my documents are actually stored. I change the location of My Documents in Windows to a different folder than C:\users\\Documents but Autocad would always open that folder (the Windows default, Windows 7 in this case) instead of where I actually store my documents. It was a pain to always have to work through the folder tree to locate where I actually wanted the file stored.

 

Today I finally took time to try to solve this and found a solution. What happens is that in Windows 7 (and maybe other versions) not only is there the properties of My Documents which points to wherever you wish your documents to be saved (C:\Users\\Documents by default) but also a profile setting for Personal in the User Shell Folders. AutoCAD opens *this* location instead of "My Documents" at whichever location you've selected it to be in.

 

You can change the location of the Personal folder under User Shell Folders in the Registry. There may or may not be a better UI for changing this and I tend to run to the Registry for this kind of work anyway.

 

The location in the Registry is: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders

 

Locate the entry for Personal which, by default, is %USERPROFILE%\Documents. I changed this to the location where I store my documents (C:\HCStuff\My Documents) and closed and then re-opened AutoCAD and saved a new document and *FINALLY* it shows me where I actually want to save my files!

 

I was unable to find a setting in AutoCAD Options for this. Maybe there is one and I just missed it. I found one for Plot and Publish but not for default saving of files.

 

Anyway, I hope this will help someone. I'd done several searches for this online and in the forums and had not found what I was looking for. Maybe I missed it or maybe I'm the only one who had difficulty in solving this "problem".

 

--HC