Profiles.... USE THEM

Once thing I have noticed recently, especially after everyone made the upgrade to 2009, is that almost no one is using Profiles. Your Windows profile is what defines (and remembers) your background wallpaper, your screensaver, icon locations, etc. AutoCAD basically has the same thing. AutoCAD saves your user interface (menus, palettes and toolbars) and other various preferences like, background color, layout color, crosshair size, etc. in a profile


Hopefully 99% of the time you never will have to mess with your profile and you can just draft away at your hearts content. BUT… it is that 1% that can ruin your day. For some reason you open up AutoCAD and everything is out of whack. Your background is white, you go to plot and none of the plotters or pen tables show up, and other, none of your fonts look correct. I am sure AutoCAD has done this to you and most of the time something went screwy with your options. Now, if you have a profile and made a backup of this profile, then you can get it fixed with a few click. If you didn’t have your profile backed up, well then, you will spend the next few hours getting everything back to the way you had it, and you will never get it back exactly the way you had it.


This is what I recommend. Once you are in AutoCAD, go to your options…
Command Line: OP or OPTIONS
Right-Click command line and select Options…
Menu>Tools>Options



Click the “Profiles” tab at the top


Click the “Add to List…” button



Name the profile your name and maybe put the version of ACAD at the end.


***Set the new profile current***

Either by double clicking or highlighting and clicking the “Set Current” button


Now, everything you do to your options will be applied to your current profile.

Once you have everything set, then Export your profile to a safe place. I don't mean in the My Documents folder on your workstation. I mean to a safe network location, floppy disk, jump drive, R drive, or even save it locally and then email it home.


To Export all you need to do is choose Options and then the Profiles tab. From there you will see a button on the right for Export. This will create an .arg file. Name the file the same name as your profile, not the name of the file. This will make it easier to fine down the road.

Now if things get messed up, you can just go to your options profile tab and click the import button and bring in your backed up profile and save yourself the headache of setting everything up again.

In the future I will show ways to have AutoCAD stat up using a specific profile (either local or on the network) and even having multiple profiles for different jobs or tasks.