Opening a File: Trust Me On This

By Russ Nicloy

I may have a series of posts subtitled “trust me on this.”  The first one appeared about a month or two ago regarding scaling of drawings.  I realized there were other issues that users everyday wander into by accident, not realizing how important they are to drawing stability.  That can really mess you (the user) up in the long run.  I believe these will be sparked by spontaneous conversations, and as issues arise, so they may be sporadic.  But, I hope they are helpful and enlightening.

This installment centers around the way people open files.  I suppose this goes for all Autodesk programs, but we see it for Civil 3D a lot.  There are a lot of users who go into Windows Explore, browse to where their file is located, then double-click the drawing icon.  this opens Civil 3D and the drawing, all in one fell swoop.  Its something that we as users do all the time, because it works….usually.

Actually, the problem with opening files this way is that it by-passes a whole host of desirable functions.  If you were to open C3D, then open the file from within the program, the configurable settings and object enablers, et al, run properly and things are great.  In fact, we aren’t certain that some stability issues aren’t related to this issue.

The issue that sparked this post was a user was opening a file through Explore, and the proxy graphics window kept popping up (which there were no proxy graphics in this file) - followed by a crash to the desktop.  When he opened from inside the program things ran just fine.

We have seen this a lot.  So trust me on this.  Open your program first, then the documents from inside.