That's One Big File: Tips for Reducing File Size and Preventing Corruption

GIL CORDLE: All right. So let's go ahead and get started. This class is That's One Big File. We're talking about file reduction and corruption. But before we really get into this, I have a confession to make. I have a guilty pleasure. At the end of a long day at the office, I tend to sit myself on the couch, open up social media and look through cleaning videos. Yes, that's right, cleaning videos.

You've seen these where they're cleaning out a car, they end up taking out the seats. They're vacuuming, they're scrubbing with the brush or the ones where they're cleaning a house that has been dirty for years, where when they open up the refrigerator that has been working in a decade and insects roam everywhere or my favorite kind, the landscape cleaning videos where the growth has gotten so big and so overgrown that they end up chopping it down pressure washing it and cleaning it.

What's crazy about these videos, and I think everybody can relate to them, majority of the time they go, well, client said, this is going to take an hour. There's no way you're killing this or chopping down those bushes, ripping car seats out, and cleaning an entire refrigerator like that within an hour. But I think we all can relate.

One reason I think we all really enjoy these kind of videos is the satisfaction or the remainder of the satisfaction when you do something that consistently goes to the point where you enjoy it. You get that satisfaction. At the end of the day, you're like, man, this is clean, this is nice. And that's what we're going to look at today in regards to our drawing file.

So a little bit about myself. My name is Gil Cordle. I am a CAD manager and project manager at GaskinsLeCraw in Atlanta, Georgia. I have been in the industry for over 20 years, focusing on production and workflow. And that's what we're going to talk about today.

As a CAD manager, I enjoy having that light bulb go off when somebody gets something. So outside of work, I am a husband and a father. I have two completely crazy dogs. I love them dearly. And a little side note, I am actually a black belt in Krav Maga, which is Israeli close combat martial arts.

And I'm also an instructor as well. So I get to talk in front of people all the time. But the thing is, it's maybe about 25 people max, so it's not a huge crowd. So this is a treat for me to be able to talk to you through a bunch of CAD stuff.

So here are the learning objectives that we have for the day. I'm not going to go through these any finite details. It's in our work. It's on our handout. It's online and everywhere else. So these learning objectives here for you. Talking about the handout, please download the handout. A lot of details that we're going to talk about in this class goes to even more details in the handout. So grab that handout. There's a couple files there for you to use and test with some of these tools.

So let's talk about our class agenda. It's broken into four major sections. The first one is drawing files. What do we do when we get a drawing file that is too large, corrupt, or have issues? Next, we're going to talk about file corruption? What causes file corruption in your drawing files and how do you handle it?

We're also going to talk about software security, utilizing what Autodesk already has on the software to help you be secure utilizing the software. And lastly, we're going to talk about prevention, which is probably the biggest section in here is the prevention part. So let's dive in and get into it and start off with drawing files.

So a little story for you. About three or four years ago, I would say more like three years ago, I had an end user come in and say, hey, I am saving a drawing and it's getting close to deadline, but it's taking me hours to save the file.

That week of deadline and taking a look at a couple of the files that he had. And then by all means, they were huge. They were taking a while to save. Some of us didn't take nearly as long to do it, but majority of us took a while to save this file.

It took us about two, three-ish days to clean the file up and to reformat it to our company standards so that it works really well. All the tools I use within that instance we're going to talk about today. We're going to talk about in finite detail today on how those tools work. So let's jump into the tools, get started.

File cleaning. So we have this divided in three different sections, file cleaning, file exporting, and file corruption. The first one we're going to talk about is file cleaning. And file cleaning, the best way to explain this is if I grab my notepad-- I have my notepad right here. I have a notepad. I think everybody has a notepad sitting beside their desk. Looks just like this. You jot down any quick things. But right now, I'm just going to grab a sheet of paper from my notepad. I'm going to draw a circle and a line on it.

So let's think that this sheet of paper is our drawing. When we start our project, we want our drawing file to look like this. We want it to end like this. When a project gets to the end, we want it to be nice, crisp, and clean. But the thing is, throughout the process of the project, it ends up getting a little bit boring. Throughout time, it gets worn down.

What's worse is there are things that causes it just to get even worse. I mean, they get beat on, beat on. And you end up with a file that is a ball of paper. This is hard to manage. This is hard to store. This is hard to fix up. This is where we typically get our files from our users. Hey, my file is acting slow. It is way too big. This is the problem. We end up with this ball of nothing.

So the file cleaning tools that we're looking at are purge audit, overkill, ScaleListEdit, filters, and standards check. What it does is it typically unwraps this piece of paper. So it helps correct. It helps fix it to where it's a little bit more useful. And these tools, what they're doing is eliminating a bunch of objects that are not needed in your drawing so that you can get it to at least a workable state.

The file export tools, those tools are as if I took that same circle online, and I transported them to a brand new sheet of paper. So now we have a clean sheet of paper because we exported the data from one file to another. So that's where file exporting may be useful in regards to keeping your files clean.

But sometimes we need that original file because it has more information or the information we need for our project. This is ideal. We export it out, and we fix it in the export, or we clean it up. So let's talk about unwrapping this piece of paper. Let's go through the tools to clean that. That is going to be the purge audit overkill.

So here is our here's AutoCAD ready to go. The file size right now is 442.42 kilobytes, 442 kilobytes. We're going to run through these tools, and I'm going to talk about exactly what each individual tool does. Remember, we go through this in really detail on the handout even so much so we have additional videos for each individual.

So starting off with the purge command, again, we're looking at 442 kilobytes. Looking at the purge command, if we type in purge in the command line, it will bring up the command. Or under the Manage tab, you have Cleanup and there's Purge right there. So we're going to start with typing in purge, and it will bring up a dialog box.

Here we go. Purge. Now this dialog box, everything on the left, which is selected, will be purged or removed from your drawing. Purge really removes unnecessary information that is already in your drawing that you may not need like every category here on the left, blocks, layers, line types. We have a series of options that you can actually look through and help speed this process up. But what I really want to talk about is this non-purgible items.

These non-purgible items is the reason why you're not able to purge them out of your drawing are two major reasons. One, you're using it. So you can't purge it if you're using it. And second, it's used in a setting with one of your tool spaces. One of the tools that are used with AutoCAD like Civil 3D or architectural.

It is within a setting in that software that is preventing it from being purged because it's like, hey, no, I need this. It's part of a setting. I don't need that layer, or I need that layer to do that settings. So here I'm going to look at everything. I'm going to purge all of it, get it all out. I don't want anymore. Get it away from you. So I've purged everything.

Another thing I want to look at is in lieu of doing the purge dialog box, we can use dash for almost any command to bring up the command line to purge or the command line for the command. So if I type dash purge, everything is within the command line. And here I'm going to select all. I don't know specific names, so I'm going to hit star. And no, I don't want to look at every single last name. There I was able to run purge and purge all without the dialog box.

The other thing I really want to purge out is regapps or registration applications. These are like soda cans in the backseat of your car. You really want to get them out because they're just going to collect ants. So regapps are just registration apps that build up drawing file. So we really want to get them purged out. And they do the exact same thing to purge. Star followed by name. And then, no, we don't want to review every single last one.

Next audit. Audit, what it does is it reviews your drawing and see look, it actually cut out 33 registered apps. And that save space. Next, we're going to look at audit. With the audit command, it looks at your drawing and reviews it, and then fixes any errors that it may have.

And of course, you can say whether or not you fix it or not. And it looks like both passes found hundreds objects to audit. One of the blocks needed to be audited out. So that saves space because it looks at the errors and fixes them.

Overkill. Overkill is a little bit trickier of a command because what it does is it looks at your drawing or the objects that you've selected. And if objects are on the same layer with similar geometry, it will reduce them to what is just needed. So for that example, we had two circles. And then we had one long line and one short line.

If you pull in overkill and select those objects, you press Enter, it'll give us some constraints. But if we go ahead and say, OK, through that, both circles have been reduced to one because you don't need that double geometry. And that short line has been combined with that long line, reducing that geometry.

The other tool that we have here is ScaleListEdit. So ScaleListEdit these scales can get-- the scales in your drawing can get very cumbersome. You can get a lot of them really quickly. Resetting them to your industry standards will help with that. But better yet, just like we did with the purge command, with the dash, if you do the exact same thing here with ScaleListEdit dash ScaleListEdit, you have an option to delete. Now this will delete everything that is not being used. If it's not being used in the drawing. It will remove it out. So if you're not use it, lose it. All right.

So after ScaleListEdit, we're going to look at filters. The next one is filters, and we're referring to layer filters. Again, if you're not using it, use it, lose it. I'm looking over scale list just to make sure all of my scale are out. So under Filters, if I type in filters, it'll bring up all of our layer filters here. We're able to keep things that we need or we're able to delete everything that is not needed.

Here I don't need those two layer filters, so I'm going to remove them both. And then here is a non-conventional way of cleaning your drawing, and that is standards check. If you have standards checks set up for your company, utilizing that will greatly benefit fixing a lot of problems. Here. I'm setting our configuration file to our company standards and opening it.

And from there, I'm going to look at the plugins. These are the things that are checked within our company standard or within the company standards. Dimension styles, layers, line types, multi-layers and texts. And so the reason why I'm even mentioning you standards check in regards to system cleaning is whenever we actually hit standards check, it will ask, hey, look, this is not our standard. What do you want to replace it with?

So dimension style of my standard is not standard. What do we want to replace it with? Why don't we try standard. From there, we hit fix. What is great about this is it replaces that information and not just replaces it, but removes it. So my scale was not just replaced, but it was removed from our drawing, making it easier to fix.

Now let's go back to those non-purgible items that we talked about. If we have non-purgible items that need to be within that drawing but replaced within a setting for one of those tools, standards check will do just that. It will replace that information. And if you look doing all those tools took our drawing from 440-something kilobytes to 37, which is a great deal of change for our drawing. So we quickly, within just a few minutes, really clean this drawing up to its bare minimum.

Next, can AI clean my drawing. I went on a run the other day and this question popped up on my head. Could I get AI to run a LISP program. If you don't know what a LISP program is, it's a program that AutoCAD is run on LISP programs. They were around since the '50s. It's one of based coding. And so hey, look, I think AI could write a way to clean our drawings without any problem.

So I asked it just that. Hey, clean up my drawing with the parameters of use purge, audit, ScaleListEdit filters and overkill, essentially the tools that we just talked about. Here on the left is what shot out from ChatGPT. And here on the right is what I had to edit to get it to run. It did have about four errors in it. It wasn't perfect, but it was close. That's what I want to point to. It is close. We're close to the point where we can say, please clean my drawing and it will automatically clean.

So let's move into file corruption and corruption issues that we have. Now, I got a call the other day from someone. And they go, hey, look, my drawing cannot open. It's corrupt. It is not working. It's not going to do anything. And so the first question I ask is, what changed? What changed between yesterday and today? What changed from the last time you opened the file and from now? Did you open up your operating system? So what changed?

And the reason why I ask that question is because majority of the time the leading cause of file corruption is missing data. So let's go back to our sheet of paper that we have here. Our sheet of paper that we have here, and this is our file. It's nice and clean and crisp, so I'm going to use this one. This is the one that's having all the trouble. It's all wrinkled and nasty.

So corrupt files are as if something's just missing from that file. It's got ripped and there's a problem with it. So if there's something wrong with it, what causes missing data? How does this happen? And there's one or many things. And this missing data could be from operating system that you're utilizing. It could be from the software that you're utilizing. It could be any extensions, VBA programs, LISP routines.

Pretty much anything you do to create this file could cause a missing piece of it because something happened. Whether or not the software didn't get completely installed on your workstation, the operating system didn't get completely installed on your workstation, when you save the file to your local server, it crashed and you're now missing a piece of paper.

Now what we can do is try to tape this together and make this look really nice. Or we could probably take a step back and do probably the better thing and try to recover that file, go back in time and recover it. So how do we recover this file from our workstation?

So let's talk about that. Recovering files. Not all is lost with corrupt files. If you're not able to open them, if you're not able to use the recover command, if you're not able to use the recover alchemy, not everything is lost. You still have something you can do.

Autodesk has two things, two ways that it is backed up within AutoCAD. One is your backup file or your bak file. Did you know that when you save a file in AutoCAD, exactly where that file was, it saves a file called a bak file. All you really have to do is change that bak extension to a DWG.

From there, you can open it and be great. So if the corruption is recent within the last few minutes and you feel like it just happened, you can still recover the last save point that you had, eliminating just a few minutes of work lost.

The other option AutoCAD has is an automatic save. Automatic save are in two different locations, one for Windows and one for Mac. They're both here on the screen. And they're temporary locations. So when you restart, it dumps this information out. So if you haven't restarted yet, you feel like you can go back with an automatic save file, go to one of these locations, look for ac$ symbol to chain. Rename it to DWG and open it. It's that simple for recovering files. But it would be confusing.

The other option that we have is local and cloud-based storage systems. So if you have local storage located in-house somewhere, having that backed up is key. And if you don't have it backed up, please get up protocols to have it backed up somewhere and get it off site. Asking your administrator to hey, recover the one from yesterday or the day before.

And if you're using cloud-based storage systems, a lot of cloud-based storage systems allows you to back up for months almost. So grabbing one from yesterday is not that hard to do just to recover it and see what you could do. The problem with corrupted files is it's best to maybe lose a day worth of work than it is to lose hours and hours and days and days and weeks and weeks later when that file becomes slow. And that's the problem.

Even if I took a piece of tape and I'm going to-- you know what? I'm going to take a piece of tape here. Well, this is great containing. I'll tell you. I'm going to take this up. I know. Take the sucker out. That's still not a great looking file.

That's not a great looking file. Just ripped up. This is going to cause problems later. So recovering an older file may be a better solution than trying to fix up the one we have current, losing just a couple of hours or a day worth of work versus losing weeks later.

So next, we're going to talk about software security. What is great about it is we just talked about file corruption, there was a couple of things in file correction that leads right into software security. Now, when I'm talking about software security, I'm not talking about your workstation or what your IT department works on or having antivirus or malware. What I'm talking about is did you know that AutoCAD has security settings already set up within the software?

So let's look at some of these security settings. Why do we have security settings even in AutoCAD? What is the point in having them? The reason why we have it is we utilize third party applications, AutoCAD extensions, VBA programs, LISP routines, and so on to do our work. And they are great. They are amazing.

But sometimes very rarely, there are tools that are going to be used that are going to cause problems within your drawing. There was a problem with the coding in it. There's a missing code and now it's corrupted. Somebody coded it wrong or somebody purposely coded it wrong.

Everybody remembers the LISP virus that happened about five, six years ago. This is an answer. Having software security on, setting your AutoCAD software security is a key point in saving file size and corruption. So the first thing I want to talk about is probably my last resort, but it's good to know right away.

Running AutoCAD in safe mode. If you haven't tried running AutoCAD in safe mode, it's cool. And what safe mode does is it really strips down the software to its bare minimum. Only what it needs to run is what it's going to run. So it's not going to run any of the extra stuff.

How you get safe mode? You copy your icon on your desktop, change the copied icon with a slash safe mode at the end of your target, hit OK and then double click on that icon to open up safe mode. Sadly, you cannot load safe mode in an already active AutoCAD drawing. So keep that in mind. The software can be active for it to run safe mode. You have to close it and then reopen it in safe mode.

So let's talk about three keys that-- three different tools that we can utilize within active AutoCAD software. So the first one is secure load. And essentially what that does is when it comes down to third party software or loading programs automatically within your software, it'll ask you what you want to do.

Legacy code search is similar to it, depends upon where those files are saved. And we'll go into details. These are our next demo. Those these three are our next demo. And then there's security options. Security options make it easy for you to set your security settings. I mentioned in the other two because we're going to use them during the prevention section.

So let's talk really quick before we go on to the demo about file objects, objects within that file and red flags that I like to know before going in, so third party applications and AutoCAD extensions. Third party applications end up creating these non-AutoCAD or non-real DWG files.

Whenever I see those things pop up on my screen, it is a red flag. It is a, hey, I need to take a few minutes, and I need to review this drawing, and I need to figure out what's going on with it, what errors may be a problem with it, and essentially clean it and fix it.

So if you're using third party applications or applications outside of AutoCAD, Autodesk is really good about giving you a warning. Hey, we didn't create this drawing. This is not based off of us. Please be aware this may have a problem, which brings up a red flag. Hey, I need to get it clean. I need to get it fixed up. This may have an issue.

The other thing that's not really a thing, but I want to mention it is proxy objects. And I think everybody here who struggles with proxy objects or a don't really know what they are squirming in their seats right now because that's what happens when you mention proxy objects. People lose their money.

So what are proxy objects? Proxy objects are standard AutoCAD objects that are tied to a database that [AUDIO OUT] is because of AutoCAD extensions like Civil 3D and architectural. Those particular disciplines benefit from referencing a database. So that's where the proxy objects come from. How do you get rid of them? Export to AutoCAD, simple command that will export everything to its parent.

So let's look at the security options that we talked about before, the secure load, the legacy code search, and security option dialog box. So let's start with secure load. Since it is a variable, you would have to do that within the command line. So you start off by typing in secure load. And I'll give you three different options 1, 2, and 3. One which allows you to load from anywhere. I do not recommend that. Load from trusted locations with this kind of warning.

And third, it's only loading programs within your trusted locations. Nowhere else. So remembering that those are the thing are big. I usually have it, set it to-- I like to have everything load automatically unless it's something new and then want to say, hey, check the location. Legacy code search is looking in the start end folder and looking for executable files.

This typically runs with VBA programs that are tied to that drawing. And you can have them on or off, which on ignores those programs and includes them in that? We have them on because I really don't want them loading unless I have to.

And lastly, the security option dialog box makes it so easy and very user friendly to set up your personal security settings. From here, it's high, medium, or off. Mine always sits kind of in the medium, a good balance.

Hi, I will do that every once in a while if I feel like there's a threat. And then the other two options that we have at the bottom, underneath the trusted file locations, which you can add a trusted file location here instead of through your options is including or excluding your start end, which is legacy secure code or legacy secure. Sorry. Legacy code search.

And the last one is whether or not starting a CAD list within a session, which you always really want to do. And so I'll have mine usually set in medium, which is really good. So are these really help. Are these really do help in regards to having good security inside of your drawing or in your program.

So let's talk about prevention. Prevention is a really big and what we're leading up to. We talked a lot about cleaning up our drawings. We talked about security and corrupted files. All of this leads up to prevention because if you can prevent it from happening to begin with, you don't have to deal with it later. So preventing it is a key in the first thing, I think of when I think of prevention is CAD standards.

So we're going to run through five key points for CAD standards. These five major sections in CAD standards. Now, I've been working for a while with these five major points of CAD standards. This is kind of where I've built a lot of hours for our company and other companies in the past. So I could really spend an entire new class on talking about all of these five CAD standards.

Heck, I could probably spend five hours talking about all five CAD standards, but I'm going to talk about them today in just regards to file size reduction and corruption. So I'm going reel myself back and just talk about those five sections in just CAD file size and correction. So I'll try to hold back.

The first section is file storage. So having a standard section for storage for your company is big. Whether or not it is local, if it's cloud-based, if it's vault, if it's whatever, AutoCAD build, Autodesk build. It doesn't matter, wherever it needs to be, it needs to be company wide, and it needs to be set as a standard.

The next thing is when we talk about file storage, I'm talking about corruption in this regards. Corruption within files can happen due to file storage issues. And the reason why I even mention that is if you're saving a file, let's say you're having a local server, you're connected to it and you're saving a file and the file is large, it's big, it takes 10 minutes, 15 minutes to save.

During that 10 and 15 minutes if your workstation crashes, if you disconnect from that server, if that server crashes, you could call missing data. In the middle of you saving that could cause missing data, which causes your files to be corrupted. So if you have a local storage system having good connection to it, having a great wiring connection, which is great for it. If you're working remotely, having a really good VPN will help with that corruption as well. So those things you have to keep in mind for it.

If you're using cloud-based storage, it's a little bit different because when you save the-- if you save the information, it saves to your hard drive and then the syncing software syncs it to the cloud. Where is there a problem with that? Easy. Make sure that your cloud-based service provider that software is up to date. You save, it really does sync to the cloud. Other thing is allowing your workstation time to sync to the cloud, which means a good connection to the internet, a good connection to that cloud storage system.

Next, we're going to talk about software use. We kind of talked about AutoCAD extensions. We talked about VBA programs and less programs and many, many other things. So software use, that's where this-- OK. Have your standard workstation set with particular software that needs to be utilized with your CAD standards.

What version of that software you're going to be using? Any AutoCAD extensions that you need architectural or Civil 3D, they are available on our website. Grab them so that you don't have to deal with proxy objects later.

LISP and VBA programs. They need to be reviewed. Anybody codes it. Any can code a LISP in VBA program. It's really not crazy. The problem is there are bad people out there that will easily take whatever they can. So copying and something from the internet and throwing it right onto your computer and go. It works. It's great. It may cause problems later, not just for corruption, file size, but even within CAD standards. A LISP team can go ahead and create a layer that is not part of your CAD standards.

So having somebody like a CAD manager, like a CAD manager, a manager, someone who is really good at this stuff, look at the code, know what they're looking at review it, and then distribute to your users because it will save you money.

All right. Software settings. This is the next demo. The next demo is we're going to look at how we can do software settings, both in the security section. We're going to have our software do it automatically. And when I'm talking about software settings. I'm talking about ACAD list and ACAD [AUDIO OUT]

So we're going to use ACAD list and ACAD doc list to both clean and to set up your security settings. The next section, we're talking about templates and support files. Now templates and support files, if you start your project like this, a template that is looks like this.

And it's a ball and you're ripping it out. Then just imagine what your project's going to end up looking like. It's not going to be great. So the thought process of, hey, look, we had a great project. This project was amazing. Let's save as this and use it as our template.

You're starting off like this. So making sure that your template is better than this. It's a good thing. Making sure it's a blank sheet of paper is what you really need. So having that is a thing. Another thing is if you're grabbing it from somewhere else and you save as, right onto your hard drive or right onto the server you might have trouble with that because again, you're looking at a file that may be really old.

Never use a file for your project that you don't know the history of it. Don't use a file if you don't know the history. You wouldn't buy a car without knowing the CARFAX, without looking at the CARFAX. So that's exactly what we're looking at [AUDIO OUT]. Just because that last project was great, grab the information and bring it over. Don't save as and then delete everything and call it a day. Hey, this is our template.

Also the same thing with support files. If you're looking at support files, anything issues with blocks. If you have an issue with a block, guess what? You've copied that block 500 times and you're wrong. Now you have 500 problems. So making sure your template file and your support files are clean are crucial with reducing your file size and corruption big time.

So lastly, workflows. So remember we talked about that project at the beginning, hey man, it took hours to actually save. So we went through cleaning and all that stuff, but we also had to do a lot of changes when we worked. Because the project wasn't set up properly based off of our company workflow, but if those workflows were set, then [AUDIO OUT]

So we reviewed the workflows with our end user and made sure we have really good workflows within our company standards. So yes, our CAD standards are not just what's drawing our lines or circles, but workflows that are crucial to help reduce file size and corruption.

So let's talk about software settings. So let's set up an ACAD doc and an ACAD doc LISP real quick. So in a blank section, I'm going to create a new text file. And I'm going to change that text file to ACAD doc. So I'm going to call it ACAD. I'm changing it to extension to LSP.

Now, if you haven't done LISP routines before, if you haven't coded this routines LISP, don't leave just yet. I know coding is scary. This is going to be really simple and easy. Like I said before, our list programs are fun. They're easy to work with. So here we're going to actually create one that every time you open up a drawing, it'll do those cleaning tools.

Now, if you haven't used this yet, the Visual LISP editor in AutoCAD done by Microsoft is amazing. So under Applications there is visual list editor. I'm going to select that and launch that. And that is what is right here. This is a great tool for you to be able to write, enlist programs, run and debug them.

So again, we're going to write this code out to simply clean our drawing. Every time we open a drawing, it's just going to clean it up. So when I think about running a command. Maybe I'll start with command. I'll start writing command. And then what is my command. I'm going to say purge because we're going to do the purge command.

The next thing I type is A for all. So when you were to type an A, we'll say A for all. And then if I remember right, the next thing it's going to ask is a name, which if we put star says every name. The next we're going to say no, we don't want to review every name. So that, in short, is list routine. I'm pretty much writing everything in that command, so let's review doing just that. So type in purge. Wait, it's a command line, so I need to type in purge.

From there, we're going to hit A for all. Star, which means, hey, everything that we can. And no, I don't want to review. And it runs that purge command. So all we really need to do now is change our list routine to speak computer. So everything we're going to type in, we're going to put in parentheses.

So, hey, this is what I'm saying, quote, quote, quote, purge A star in. And then we're going to close it with brackets, beginning and ending that command. So brackets at the beginning, brackets at the end, everything you type is going to be parentheses or quotations.

So let's run and debug this. And I ran just fine. From here I'm just going to copy and paste all the other commands in here to speed this up a little bit. So here's our audit. Here's our ScaleListEdit, I think we got overkill that we have here. I think that's all we're going to do. So we're going to hit Run and debug.

And there we go. Everything ran smoothly. So now that we have our ACAD doc set up, let's set up our ACAD list. This runs whenever you run the software. So the software will look for a document called ACAD doc and look for a document called ACAD list. And when it runs the program, it will run ACAD list which runs the document. It'll run ACAD doc. Again, just making a document that's acad.lsp.

And here are the two things we really want to change with your workstation is every time I load the software, I want secure load to be changed to 2 and legacy code search to be on. So here I'm just running through those commands to make sure I have the right keystrokes for it. And now I'm going to bring up that visual list editor.

Here again, I'm going to put brackets. So I'm going to go ahead and put in the brackets on either side, type in command line, go ahead and put in parentheses, secure load, and then put in parentheses 2. Secure load and then last in parentheses, quotations. Sorry. I keep saying parentheses, quotations 2.

For the next, I'm just going to write that next command line real quick, doing a command line legacy code search. Quotations legacy code search and change it to on. So you can change it however you want within your company standards so that whenever these codes run and are set up, they run how you want your company standards to run. So let's hit Run and Debug. Make sure that these two settings work just fine and they run just fine.

So how do we tell the software now to run these two programs automatically? All we really need to do is add in to our support file path where are those two programs are located. And they have to be located in the same folder, which is this folder we have here.

And so I'm going to add a support file path and I'm going to place it in. And better yet, I'm going to take it. I'm going to move it all the way at the top. So the first folder in that tree, that's where it's going to look for those two LISP programs. If they're not in that folder, they're not going to be updated.

You move it all the way up to the top. And now that it's set up at the top, I'll hit OK. And the next time I load a drawing [AUDIO OUT]. The next time I load the software, it'll automatically set up my security settings. So now as a ACAD manager in our standards, we now are able to control how things work within individual users.

So if we don't really have any questions, we will go on to conclusion. So being proactive rather than reactive is key. Thinking about how you can prevent these things from happening and causing issues. Using your CAD standards, again, that's being very proactive. Having good CAD standards, even if you're a two or three person shop and you're like, I don't think we need CAD sensors. We only have two or three people working on it.

Having your own personal CAD standards to make sure that you're not doing something that would cause issues down the road for your project is key. Still, having CAD standards at any level is a big deal. So being proactive rather than reactive. Instead of going, I'm going to clean the file when it's dirty, clean the file before it's dirty.

Take a deep breath. Take a deep breath. Just because the file is big, it's taking a while to clean. It's taking a while to recover. We think you're going to lose a lot. Take a deep breath because you will find the solution quickly. Go back through this video. Go back through the handout. The solutions are here. If I don't have it, there's somebody out there that does. Take a deep breath. Recover and clean it. You'll get there.

All right. So just to get in touch with me, if you have any questions that we didn't cover here, feel free to contact me on LinkedIn at Gil Cordle. I'm on X as well, in YouTube. And if you're curious what we do here at GaskinsLeCraw, you can always check us out at gaskinslecraw.com.

So hope you had a great lesson here. I hope you grabbed a lot from it. Hope you're going to have those. Those files on the Jenny Craig program sometime soon. Hope you have a great one. Talk to you next time.