What's your favourite ACAD prank?

[troma]

Do you like to mess with your coworkers' minds?  What do you do?  Set MBUTTONPAN to 0?  I'll tell you my favourite later.  What's yours?

[doni49]

I just remembered another one -- only this one was a little more recent.

At my former job, one of my fellow CAD techs had been promoted to "CAD Mgr".  She did ok with keeping track of where things were filed and was ok with keeping track of who was assigned to what project.  But that was all -- she had no clue about anything else that would normally be considered "CAD Mgmt" (not good even with block definitions or anything like that).

But yet, because she was now the "CAD Mgr", it gave her a swelled head and she earned herself the nickname of "CAD Nazi".  Our network login was handled via batch file. 

I figured out how to code a batch file so that it changed the screen saver to that old "Marquee" screen saver that scrolled text across your screen.   My batch file randomly chose BG colors, Txt colors & Txt fonts for this and then changed the wording to say "I am CAD Nazi -- hear me roar!!!".

I had it set up so that some days this would run and other days it wouldn't.  Between the randomness of running vs not and the varying colors/fonts, it looked like someone was accessing her computer each time and changing it.  This went on for about 2 months -- but then she got fired because the boss was getting too many complaints that she had become so obnoxious.

[shunter62]

In my pre-CAD days (before 1984) the best practical joke one could play on someone was to cut a square of mylar a littlle smaller than a slice of bread & put it in someone's sandwich. The April Fool once hid ALL of the red pens and pencils in a busy engineering office, when engineers "designed" in red and drafters copied.

Sometime in the late 90's I aquired a lisp routine called "freakout" from a co-worker. It zoomed the screen in and out at an ever increasing and decrasing size and pace. Escape stopped it. I have it stashed on a cd, somewhere...

[graemev]

I recall one fellow student "abandoning" her workstation for a little too long one afternoon.  Another classmate placed a single point approximately 50 miles (model space) away from the UCS origin, then zoomed in on a small area of the model.  The first student returned, did a zoom-all, and freaked out about her model disappearing.

[CADiva]

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@graemev wrote:

I recall one fellow student "abandoning" her workstation for a little too long one afternoon.  Another classmate placed a single point approximately 50 miles (model space) away from the UCS origin, then zoomed in on a small area of the model.  The first student returned, did a zoom-all, and freaked out about her model disappearing.

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LOL - civil engineers seem to do this to all their files.

[GilesPhillips]

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@CADiva wrote:

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@graemev wrote:

I recall one fellow student "abandoning" her workstation for a little too long one afternoon.  Another classmate placed a single point approximately 50 miles (model space) away from the UCS origin, then zoomed in on a small area of the model.  The first student returned, did a zoom-all, and freaked out about her model disappearing.

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LOL - civil engineers seem to do this to all their files.

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Amen to that - that isn't a prank, it's more a daily routine.

I don't CAD prank my colleagues, as I'm the go-to for whenever things go wrong, or something happens which they don't understand 😞

Most the office pranks are phyiscal - one favourite is the post-it-note stuck to the underside of the optical mouse - though my colleagues got their own back with a weeks worth of dead flies in the little diode apeture on my mouse - perhaps post-its were in short supply that day..

Generally anyone who leaves their workstation unlocked in my presence will find their outlook calendar filled with bizarre appointments, and their personal profile on our intranet subtly modified.

[Mistress0fTheDorkness]

Gosh, we're boring in my office...

All we do is occasionally smack each other with rolls of prints or leave coffee rings all over one another's expensive equipment.

Maybe it's time to steal some of my kids' fake bugs and rodents?

[rkmcswain]

Yes, I know this is an old thread....but I think I've stumbled across one that could drive someone crazy.

Set CONSTRAINTINFER = 1 and CONSTRAINTBARDISPLAY = 0

[Mistress0fTheDorkness]

lol.

My users aren't quite experienced enough for me to want to autocad prank them.

BUT, I am delighted to see that my new coworkers have a fake mouse which they occasionally slip into someone's cabinet or on their mousepad. That's always good for a giggle.

[doni49]

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@Mistress0fTheDorkness wrote:
lol.

My users aren't quite experienced enough for me to want to autocad prank them.

BUT, I am delighted to see that my new coworkers have a fake mouse which they occasionally slip into someone's cabinet or on their mousepad. That's always good for a giggle.

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I'd love to find one that looks real AND MOVES.  Oh the pranks that could bring.  🙂

This one reminds me of my pre-CAD days .  I worked as a waiter while going to school.  We had a head waitress (Joanie) that was (and presumably still is) terrified of bugs, mice etc.  We also had a manager (Rich) who LOVED to play pranks.

One day, Rich got the bright idea to grab a carry out bag, blow it up and squeeze the top shut.  He then took it in the back and saw Joanie eating her lunch in the break room.  He held the bag up and proclaimed "Hey Joanie -- guess what I found!"  Within a split second, she's up out of her chair, back against the wall screaming her head off.  You should've seen her reaction when he gave the bag a toss in her direction.  When he calmed down from laughing, he explained that the bag was empty and got her calmed down.

I was in the stock room across from the break room so I got to witness this.

[Mistress0fTheDorkness]

Haha. My mom is the biggest wuss.

One time, when my youngest was a baby, my Mom starts going on and on about how much poo turns her stomach.
My husband asked her to change our son's diaper and she's all, 'nope!'

So, Mick changes him, hands him to me, then takes the bag with the poopy diaper... and proceeds to chase my mother around the house with it.

We were all crying with laughter.
I'm married to one classy guy. 😉

[tedwardspg]

(command "exit""n")

Is a classic. They will go crazy till you  add the ;;

[KLYPHY]

From one of Lynn Allen: AutoCAD Godess:

Use the layer properties to set all layers to 'No Plot',

Then shrink the width of that column so the user can't see the change.

Everything seems to work OK, but nothing plots, so it appears to be a plotter/Windows/network issue, not AutoCAD

From AutoCAD Message Board: Colin French: Aug/08/06 - 13:49 (GMT)

[doni49]

That's evil. . 😉
--
Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.

[KLYPHY]

Evil yes, but from the Godess  herself.

[AllenJessup]

You could always set MTJIGSTRING to "FAILED". That might through some people off.

Allen

[scot-65]

I know this is an old thread, but new to me...

A coworker who was one of the first to use AutoCAD in our office noticed a fundamental

change to the ZOOM command - it now defaulted to Window where there was no default

in the previous release. He wrote a LISP that looked exactly like the ZOOM command

and when one typed Z [Enter] W [Enter] an alert box would appear "You do not need

to enter "W" anymore".

Showing my age (also):

Our college acquired several suitcase-like computers that had flip-tops (like a hard-pack of

cigarettes) where the top had the keyboard built-in, with the  rest in the body - a small screen to

the left, and two floppy bays 5-1/2". One bay was for the OS/software, the other for user storage.

There was a new peripheral for this computer - a COM mouse. With the pad to the right of the

computer and the mouse on top of it, the mouse would not perform very well. We discovered

that turning the mouse pad 90 degrees (landscape), the [optical] mouse would work as expected.

I would turn the mouse pads 90 degrees if I got there early enough... and turned it when I was

finished.

Pic is similar to what I worked on.

Early releases of AutoCAD had Easter Eggs inside. I remember seeing them, but no longer know

what they said. I incorporated a line in the screen menu (a "--------" dividing the header of the screen

menu with the body) to display an alert message for each layer group associated to the screen menu...

And to this day the newbies stumble upon these.

[Murph_Map]

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@scot-65 wrote:

I know this is an old thread, but new to me...

Our college acquired several suitcase-like computers that had flip-tops (like a hard-pack of

cigarettes) where the top had the keyboard built-in, with the  rest in the body - a small screen to

the left, and two floppy bays 5-1/2". One bay was for the OS/software, the other for user storage.

There was a new peripheral for this computer - a COM mouse. With the pad to the right of the

computer and the mouse on top of it, the mouse would not perform very well. We discovered

that turning the mouse pad 90 degrees (landscape), the [optical] mouse would work as expected.

I would turn the mouse pads 90 degrees if I got there early enough... and turned it when I was

finished.

Pic is similar to what I worked on.

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That PC looks like what was used in Desert Storm by our logistics sections. Over in the Operations section we had the regular Zenith desktops. 

[AllenJessup]

Looks like an old 45 rpm record case to me.

This is what I started on.

No screen. Just vacuum tubes displaying coordinates.

Allen

[KLYPHY]

I have 43 AutoCAD jokes. I don't use them at work, not wanting to slow production, but, I'll share them with you guys, to slow down your office production.

Here's No.1:

01 -Creating wipeouts (with frames turned off of course) over parts (or the entire) drawings they've been working on and watching them squirm and cry while shrugging off their inquiries for a little while before I go and fix the drawings while they're away.

[KLYPHY]

As I mentioned yesterday, I have 43 AutoCAD jokes, which I don't use at my office, not wanting to slow production or make enemies.

But, for the rest of you guys, I'll share them to help you get even with co-workers.

Here's No.2:

02 -Here’s real simple trick that will take them a while to figure out. When they're not there, set the Snap increment to an astronomically high number, like 1,000,000'. When they come back, there will be no cursor and no response. They can click on the buttons outside the work area, but can do nothing to the drawing. They can even turn off the snap, which will restore the cursor, but how long before they try that? They'll probably even reboot their computer to no avail.  It would be easy for them to check the commands to see what had been done, but only if they suspect someone’s messing with their computer.

From Me: July/20/06