AutoCAD 2009… A closer look at the Action Recorder

The new action recorder in AutoCAD 2009 can help you increase productivity by automating those repetitive tasks!

For example, imagine you’re a landscape architect and each time you receive a new site plan from a client, you have to add standard layers with the appropriate layer properties. You could create a custom LiSP file, but for such a simple task, it hardly seems worth the effort… especially if you don’t have an in-house LiSP expert! You could store your standard layers in a template file but, still, you must somehow get them into the client’s drawing, which takes time.
Using the new action recorder, you simply begin recording and then perform those monotonous tasks that you’ve performed many times before. While it is recording, you can launch commands, enter values, and select objects using familiar AutoCAD functionality. The action recorder records everything that passes through the command line plus it can also record typical actions from:

• Toolbars
• Ribbon panels
• Pull-down menus
• Properties window
• Layer Properties Manager
• Tool Palette

When you’re finished performing a repetitive operation, you simply stop the recording and enter an appropriate name for the action macro. Each action macro that you create is saved as an individual file and stored in the location specified by the Action Recording File Location option in the Files tab of the Options dialog box. A second option for Action Recorder Settings on the Files tab enables you to include locations for reading additional action macros making it easy to share action macros among your design team. The action macros in these specified locations are automatically listed in the Action Recorder panel.

You can create more robust and interactive macros by including text messages and requests for user input. And, you can edit input values even after you’ve recorded the macro.

Action macros behave very much like commands. You can type them at the command line, assign short-cut aliases, and can call one macro from another. You can even call LiSP and ARX routines from a macro simply by running the routine while recording the macro!

View Demo