Customization / Editing Command Aliases
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AutoCAD has always had Command Aliases. Now these throw back to the old DOS days of AutoCAD where you did have to type in commands. So for example, at the crosshair here if I type in C and press Enter that'll actually kick off the Circle Command for me. I don't have to type the whole word Circle. If I just press Escape there to cancel that and I do type circle, though, what you'll find is that kicks off the Circle Command as well, as you can see. It's prompting me for a Center point for the circle there. So I'll just press Escape there to cancel the command. If I press L and press Enter, that kicks off the Line Command. You can see that on the Command Line there at the bottom of the screen; it says: Line, specify first point. If I type in C, Circle, specify center point. So if you've got your Dynamic Input on you can see it in the Drawing Area. If you haven't got your Dynamic Input on you can see it on the Command Line. Now these Aliases have been created and are stored in a particular file. It's the acad.pgp file, so that's a-c-a-d. p-g-p. I've got it up here in the Help screens here. So if I now click here to search you'll see that there's lots of information about the acad.pgp file, so I can go and look up lots of Help information there. You don't need to worry about it too much, but basically what you're doing here is we're going to look now at changing our Command Aliases. Now if I go to the Manage tab like we did when we were customizing earlier, you can see that I've got an Edit Aliases option on the Customization Panel. If I click on Edit Aliases it actually opens up in Notepad, which is the Windows sort of Text Editor. You've also got a Word Pad; you can also do this in Word if you want to, it's purely text. But you can see there, lots of information and parameters about the acad.pgp file. The most important one is this recommendation here: Backup this file before editing it, to ensure that any changes you make to PGP settings can successfully be migrated when you upgrade to the next version of AutoCAD it is suggested that you make any changes to the Default settings in the User Defined Command Aliases section at the end of this file. So you can see there, lots of information again. So if I just scroll down, there's all of the Aliases there. So, for example, if we go down to C, it's C comma Ð there's always a comma, then AutoCAD recognizes that there's a space or a pause Ð and there's asterisk and then CIRCLE. That's how AutoCAD reads these Aliases. So if I scroll down a little bit further, there's L comma for LINE there, you can just see it there. Now, working in this way I actually find quite cumbersome using the Notepad. There is an easier way of editing these Aliases and it's actually in your Express Tools. If I close this Notepad Ð I'm not going to save the changes there Ð and I go to my Express Tools tab here in the Ribbon, you'll notice if I go to Tools here, look, you've got Command Aliases on the Tools Panel and this brings up a really nice little dialog box that allows me to work with those Command Aliases. So what we'll do here is we'll just go down the list, I'm going to find C for circle, so I just keep scrolling down Ð there's C for CIRCLE, I click on the C, I click on the Edit. I can now edit that. So I want the Alias now to be ci, I OK that now and it updates it, CI for CIRCLE, you can see that there. So if I Apply that now: Do I want to overwrite it? Yes I do. So that Alias has now been saved and the current AutoCAD Session has been updated. So I'll OK that, and I'll OK that. Takes a few OKs there; that's because it's just checking that you want to do this. I'm going to change it back in a moment anyway, so it's no real problem. But if I now type C and press Enter, I still get the center point for circle like so, but if I type ci and press Enter I get center point for circle as well. So I've created a new Command Alias for the Circle Command. Now, why is it using both you may ask? That's because it still remembers the C Command Alias for circle as well. If I just hit Escape there and type reinit Ð Re-initialize Ð what will happen now is it'll re-initialize my PGP file here, and I'll OK it. So now if I type C and enter, I still get center point for circle, but if I type ci I still get center point for circle, because it remembers those Aliases. So if I go back to Command Aliases here now, and scroll down and find my CIRCLE Ð just missed it there Ð notice, because I've reinitialized, it's gone back to the original PGP file, but it still remembers the CI as well. So you can see there with Command Aliases that it's very clever. It remembers Aliases but also you can create new Aliases, and if you reinitialize it goes back to your original acad.pgp file. This is useful if you want to reset back. You can also create, as it said, User Defined Aliases as well, especially if you're creating your own Aliases for commands you might have written macros for. So if you've written your own command in AutoCAD and you want an AutoCAD Command Alias for it, put that in your User Defined part of your PGP file. That way, when you upgrade to the next version of AutoCAD it should also upgrade your own User Defined and customized commands. So, that's Command Aliases for you and as you can see, much easier to read and understand if you use your Express Tools tab and Command Aliases on the Tools Panel, rather than Notepad where you can easily make mistakes.
Tutorial Information
| Course: | Autodesk AutoCAD 2010: Intermediate 2D Concepts |
| Author: | Shaun Bryant |
| SKU: | 34022 |
| ISBN: | 1-935320-60-2 |
| Release Date: | 2009-08-04 |
| Duration: | 7.5 hrs / 101 lessons |
| Work Files: |
Yes |
| Captions: | Available on CD and Online University |
| Compatibility: |
Vista/XP/2000, OS X, Linux QuickTime 7, Flash 8 |
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