Easy file shortcut creation

[afisher]

Is there a way to take the active (open) drawings, create shortcuts of each, and save them all to a predetermined location?

[pendean]

What's the ultimate purpose for this?
And do you use SSM?

[afisher]

For an ECN release or revision.

What is SSM?

[pendean]

Sheet Set Manager, inside AutoCAD: great at managing sets of files/sheets for a project or release or revision.

[dmfrazier]

"Is there a way to take the active (open) drawings, create shortcuts of each, and save them all to a predetermined location?"

"For an ECN release or revision."

Perhaps you already know this, but just in case, beware that a Windows shortcut is not a copy of the file it references in any sense of the word.  A shortcut (to a file) only stores a pointer (path/filename) to a file.  The file it points to may or may not be there, and it may or may not have changed since the shortcut was created.  The same shortcut stored in two different folders still points to the same file.  So, I may be misunderstanding your intention (and please set me straight if I am), but I don't think saving shortcuts will get you the result you're looking for.

Please elaborate more on your intention if you want additional advice or alternatives.

[afisher]

I have tried SSM before. It worked OK, but not exactly what I was looking for. It's especially not that useful for us since we do not use sheet layouts. It does however link associated files, but points to the sheet layout. I would just switch over to model space.

[afisher]

dm,

These shortcuts will just be sent on a temporary basis so that the approver can have direct access to the files to sign off on the drawings rather than looking them up.

[dmfrazier]

"Is there a way to take the active (open) drawings, create shortcuts of each, and save them all to a predetermined location?"

"These shortcuts will just be sent on a temporary basis so that the approver can have direct access to the files..."

It's not difficult (with LISP) to put together a list of all the open drawings.  The "kicker" here is that you want "shortcuts", which I wouldn't know where to begin creating one, programmatically, based on that list (or otherwise, for that matter).

One alternative approach I thought of was to create "hyperlinks" from the list of open drawings so that you could copy/paste them into an e-mail message, but I'm getting stuck at formatting the items in the list in such a way that when copied and pasted from the AutoCAD text screen (to an Outlook message, for instance), they "automatically" convert to hyperlinks in the message.  (I can't get it to work using Outlook, but perhaps it would work with another e-mail program.)

(Assuming this alternative would be acceptable, perhaps my "noodling" will be a catalyst for someone else.)

[dgorsman]

Easier to construct the data into an XML file.  That way, a central XSL stylesheet can be referenced to format the contents into HTML when the XML file is opened.

[afisher]

I did some research and found a lisp routine that would open the current .dwg file folder location. The problem is I still have to browse to the file to create a shortcut.

Anyone have any other ideas?

[cadwomen]

maybe you shoud post the lisp

cu cw

[afisher]

Good idea CW. Maybe someone knows how to take this .lsp and modify it to fit my needs. Any volunteers?

[dmfrazier]

All that LISP does is open Explorer to a specific folder, namely the folder in which the current drawing resides (which may or may not be where any of the other open drawings reside).  It is hard to see how opening any folder in Explorer would get you any closer to creating shortcuts, so I don't readily see how this code could be modified to suit your stated needs.  But this does prompt a new question: Are the "active (open) drawings" (a) always going to be together in the same folder, or (b) might they be spread across multiple folders?  If (b), that would seem to make it even less likely.

In your first post you say:

"Is there a way to take the active (open) drawings, create shortcuts of each, and save them all to a predetermined location?"

Depending on how you create and/or open drawing files, it may be that shortcuts already exist in one or more places managed by AutoCAD and/or Windows.  The folders are usually subfolders of a folder named "Recent". For AutoCAD (assuming basic 2013), this folder is:
C:\Users\<YourUserName>\AppData\Roaming\Autodesk\AutoCAD 2013 - English\R19.0\enu\Recent

For instance, if you Open files from within AutoCAD, shortcuts are automatically created here:
C:\Users\<YourUserName>\AppData\Roaming\Autodesk\AutoCAD 2013 - English\R19.0\enu\Recent\Select File

or here:
C:\Users\<YourUserName>\AppData\Roaming\Autodesk\AutoCAD 2013 - English\R19.0\enu\Recent\Select Drawing File

(Not sure what the difference is.)

If you SaveAs in AutoCAD, shortcuts are stored here:
C:\Users\<YourUserName>\AppData\Roaming\Autodesk\AutoCAD 2013 - English\R19.0\enu\Recent\Save Drawing As

You could root around in these various folders and see if any of them holds promise.  Maybe you could come up with a "manual" solution, or possibly craft a semi-automated solution by combining a modified version of that LISP and one or more of these folders.

[afisher]

dm,

If the LISP could be directed to the current file then I could right click drag to an email to create a shortcut.  Otherwise I could sort by last modified and it would show up at the top.

I don't necessarily have to create shortcuts for all open drawings.  That would just be convenient.

I am not constrained to a particular way to accomplish this task.  I am just researching to see if there is a better way.

I was able to find the shortcuts that AutoCAD automatically creates.  This could be very useful.  Now if I could find someone that could possibly updated that LISP file or create one that can accomplish my request.

[tcorey]

If you truly want shortcuts, just browse to the location of the .dwg files, select all .dwg files, right click, pick Create Shortcut. That creates a shortcut for each selected file. Cut and paste those to wherever. Just be sure the person who receives them has the same drive mapping. If you were to create a shortcut pointing to P:\Projects\Project14-101\drawings and the other user doesn't have P: mapped to the same network share, your shortcut won't work.

I was, however, going to give the same suggestion as dmfrazier. Use Hyperlinks.

In an email or doc file, type some text, such as Drawing: BaseModel, select that text, press Ctrl+K, paste the path and filename to link -- which you can copy from the target line of the shortcut properties. 🙂

Best regards,

Tim

[dmfrazier · Accepted solution]

If you're interested in trying out the hyperlinks concept, the attached LISP will list the path/filename of all open DWGs and present it to you in the AutoCAD text window.

The list will look like this example:

file:///
file:///C:\Drawing\Temp\00FDCM4\TEST_01.dwg
file:///C:\Drawing\Temp\00FDCM4\TEST_02.dwg
file:///C:\Drawing\Temp\00FDCM4\TEST_03.dwg
file:///C:\Drawing\Temp\00FDCM4\TEST_04.dwg
file:///C:\Drawing\Temp\00FDCM4\TEST_05.dwg

Note that the first item in the list (file:///) will appear only if you happen to have an unnamed ("new") DWG file open.  You can either close that file or name it and run it again, or just ignore it in the output.

Copy the list of path/filenames and paste it into an email message.

You will have to test this with your email program, but when I move the cursor to the end of each line and hit Enter, the "string" turns into a working hyperlink that seems to me every bit as good as (maybe better than) a shortcut (with all of the aforementioned limitations).

[afisher]

I cannot get your LISP file to work. It looks like it's a subfunction.

[dmfrazier · Accepted solution]

Once it's loaded, run it inside parentheses, as in (ListOpenDocs).

[afisher]

Works great. Thanks.

[dmfrazier]

You're welcome.  Glad to know it works for you.  (I only wish it could have been a little more "automatic" in the way the hyperlinks are created.)

I don't know how useful it will be, but I'm actually going to add this to the utilities toolkit here, in case it comes in handy for a similar or different purpose.  So thank you for asking the question and creating the challenge.