Workspace vs. Profile

[Sluman]

Could someone please explain the difference between a customized workspace and a saved profile? What are the specific uses of each? Even hypothetical scenarios to help illustrate the meaning of each and how they are different from one another would be helpful.

[tzframpton]

A Profile is a collection of user settings for AutoCAD. Usually, everything in the "Options" menu is directly related to a Profile. See here:

http://docs.autodesk.com/ACD/2014/ENU/index.html?url=files/GUID-80FE5597-4F63-40AD-B9A4-6152E2BC3CE3.htm,topicNumber=d30e339801

 

Workspaces control the display of sets of user interface elements. See here:

http://docs.autodesk.com/ACD/2014/ENU/files/GUID-E9708BEF-4C19-49DE-A792-9188A140C27E.htm

 

In laymen's terms, a Profile is all the settings you set in Options (All the directories you path in the Options > Files tab, colors of Model and Paperspace, etc), and a Workspace is all the Ribbon, Toolbars, and Palette items (what you "see" and "arrange" in AutoCAD such as the Ribbon, the Properties Palette location, which Toolbars you have open, etc).

 

Hope this helps.

[Murph_map]

Even hypothetical scenarios to help illustrate the meaning of each and how they are different from one another would be helpful.

 

In easy terms seeing you listed Construction as your discipline. Take two workers, a carpenter and a plumber, each has it's own tools and gets it supplies/materials from a different vendor. So the carpenter doesn't have to carry a pipe wrench all day long you set up the workspace just with his/her tools they need to do their job. The same for the plumber. Now for materials the carpenter goes to the lumber yard so in their profile under the support paths they have "Big Bobs Lumber" listed while the plumber has "Al's Pipe Supply" listed in their profile support path. Also the carpenter needs to cut a 2x4 off square to frame a door, where as the plumber needs to cut a 2x4 just to scab on a stud to mount his waterline, the plumbers cut doesn't have to be square. So in the carpenters profile they set Osnap on all the time while the plumber keeps it off.