My Portfolio and Blog
Today a colleague of mine could not plot a polyline at the desired lineweight. We tried different layer with the colour changed to see if was the plot style interferring. Tried turning off scale lineweights. Tried overriding the lineweight on the object itself. Tried a new plot style.
After all these attempts it occured to me that the polyline thickness might have a impact on the lineweights and it does.
Altering the polyline global width to 0 meant the lineweight now plotted correctly.
Introduced quite a while back for polylines and a while back for hatch, these allow you to add, edit and stretch existing lines by editing the blue square grips.
However sometimes on polylines the edit menu for removing does not appear. This is usually due to two overlapping grips being present in the same space.
To solve this problem, move the grip between the two points that don’t work to reveal the hidden overlapping grips. Now you should be able edit the grips again.
If you, like me have been using AutoCAD for too long, you will find warning messages annoying as you already know from experience something is wrong. For example when plotting a drawing from another company, you will know that the plotter will be set wrong as you don’t have the same plotter! But a nice friendly pop-up says, “this plotter cannot be found”.
So you want to turn them off? Here’s how!
There are three variables in AutoCAD (that I have found) that control pop-ups. First is EXPERT, second is PEDITACCEPT and the third is PLQUIET. I will go into depth on what they do below.
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When looking up these variables in the help system, the answer is quite helpful! These are listed below (copyright AutoDesk).
EXPERT
0 Issues all prompts normally.
1 Suppresses “About to regen, proceed?” and “Really want to turn the current layer off?” (-LAYER)
2 Suppresses the preceding prompts and “Block already defined. Redefine it?” (-BLOCK) and “A drawing with this name already exists. Overwrite it?” (SAVE or WBLOCK).
3 Suppresses the preceding prompts and those issued by the LINETYPE Command prompt (-LINETYPE) if you try to load a linetype that’s already loaded or create a new linetype in a file that already defines that linetype.
4 Suppresses the preceding prompts and those issued by UCS Save and VPORTS Save if the name you supply already exists.
5 Suppresses the prompt, “That name is already in Use, redefine it?” issued by the -DIMSTYLE Save option when you supply the name of an existing dimension style. Suppresses the same prompt issued by the -SCALELISTEDIT Add option.
When a prompt is suppressed by EXPERT, the operation in question is performed as though you entered y at the prompt. Note: Setting EXPERT can affect scripts, menu macros, AutoLISP, and the command function.
PLQUIET
0 Displays plot dialog boxes and nonfatal errors
1 Logs nonfatal errors and doesn’t display plot-related dialog boxes
PEDITACCEPT
0 Displays a prompt that gives you a choice of converting selected objects into polylines
1 Automatically converts selected objects into polylines without a prompt