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The Options of AutoCAD 2010-Open Save Tab-Part 1

The first area on this tab is the File Save settings.

[1]

Save As
Displays the file formats that can be used when saving a file with SAVE, SAVEAS, QSAVE, and WBLOCK. Whatever you set here will be used as the default setting for all drawings that are saved when you use SAVE, SAVEAS, QSAVE, and WBLOCK.

Note: AUtodesk does not change the file formats with each release. They generally go three releases before updating the file format.  So AutoCAD 2004 is the drawing file format used by the AutoCAD 2004, 2005, and 2006 releases. AutoCAD 2007 is the file format used by AutoCAD 2007, 2008, and 2009 releases.  You get the idea.  You can also set it to DXF – if you wanted to.  DWT is a format for Template files.

[2]

Visual Fidelity for Annotative Objects

When working with annotative objects, this option allows you to maintain visual fidelity for these objects when they are viewed in AutoCAD 2007 format and earlier releases. Visual fidelity is controlled by the SAVEFIDELITY system variable.

If you work primarily in model space, it is recommended that you turn off visual fidelity (set SAVEFIDELITY to 0). However, if you need to exchange drawings with other users, and layout fidelity is most important, then visual fidelity should be turned on (set SAVEFIDELITY to 1).

[3] It is a good time to bring up the little “i” in the circle.  It is called the Information Icon. Hit this and go instantly to the help files for the setting identified with this symbol.

Maintain Drawing Size Compatibility
Specifies whether or not the AutoCAD 2009 and earlier object size limits are used instead of those for AutoCAD 2010. Click the information icon to learn more about object size limits and how they affect opening and saving a drawing. (LARGEOBJECTSUPPORT system variable)

Drawings saved to a legacy drawing file format (AutoCAD 2007 or earlier) do not support individual objects greater than 256MB. With the AutoCAD 2010 drawing file format, these limitations have been removed allowing you to save objects that are greater in size. You will not be impacted by this very often.

When saving to a legacy drawing file format (AutoCAD 2007 or earlier), the drawing cannot contain large objects; there might be compatibility issues with trying to open the drawing. The LARGEOBJECTSUPPORT system variable controls the large object size limits used and the warning messages displayed when a drawing is saved.

The following explains how object size limits for drawings is determined:

Drawing files cannot exceed an internal size limit of 4GB. This size is based on the total size of all objects in a drawing when uncompressed. Since a drawing file is normally compressed, the final size of a saved drawing file on disk will vary based on the size and number of objects in a drawing.

Each individual object in a drawing cannot exceed an uncompressed size limit of 256MB. For example, a mesh object, when saved to a file and compressed, might be 75MB in size while the same object when uncompressed might be 257MB.

In these situations, the drawing cannot be saved to an AutoCAD 2007 or earlier file format until the issues are resolved. You can resolve the size limits by breaking the drawing or objects up into several drawings or objects.

Note: When working with the 64-bit release of AutoCAD, you can work more efficiently with large objects and drawings. However, the drawing files you create might be too large to open with the 32-bit release of AutoCAD. This might bite you in a mixed environment.

Thumbnail Preview Settings

[4]

This dialog box allows you to set Home Views so that you always get the same look. Default is to show you the last saved viewing area.  You can also set Sheet Set Manager thumbnails and Named View thumbnails.

Incremental Save Percentage
Sets the percentage of potentially wasted space in a drawing file. Full saves eliminate wasted space by resorting and compressing file information. Incremental saves are faster but they increase the size of your drawing. If you set Incremental Save Percentage to 0, every save is a full save. For optimum performance, set the value to 50. If hard disk space becomes an issue, set the value to 25. If you set the value to 20 or less, performance of the SAVE and SAVEAS commands slows significantly. (ISAVEPERCENT system variable). If you are in and out of drawings all day then you will be doing Full saves all the time. If you spend a lot of time in the same file, then your quick saves “QS” will be faster but take up more space -this is usually not an issue for most users. Leave it set to 50.

1 Comment (Open | Close)

1 Comment To "The Options of AutoCAD 2010-Open Save Tab-Part 1"

#1 Comment By Scott Wilcox On April 14, 2010 @ 2:47 PM

I recommend to all my users to set ISAVEPERCENT to 0. That way, every time the savetime timer hits, you get a SV$ file.

With ISAVEPERCENT at 50, you get a lot of smaller AC$ files, which are not openable as AutoCAD files. Trouble is, you really only access these data if you have a crash or corrupt file. AC$ are little help at that point. With normal exit, the SV$ files go away, so space is not a huge issue. I dedicate a folder on my hard drive for the auto save files.