Reg Apps

[justinmaughan3971]

When I took a class a while back, the instructor told me to do a "-purge" command, and purge the regapps often while working in a file. She said they are the source of a lot of fatal errors. Can anyone shed any light on what a regapp is, and how are they created?

[Anonymous]

jmaughan wrote:

> When I took a class a while back, the instructor told me to do a
> "-purge" command, and purge the regapps often while working in a
> file. She said they are the source of a lot of fatal errors. Can
> anyone shed any light on what a regapp is, and how are they created?

A RegApp is short for RegisteredApplication. Its a critical key for
add-on developers to allow for appending information to AutoCAD objects.
This could be used to store information directly on the object or to
store an index to external information.

If used wisely and *conservatively*, its safe and useful to both the
developer and the user of the products. Unfortunately some developers
have not thought the approach through. Instead of creating one RegApp
and applying indexes using that one AppName, some have created a new
RegApp name for each object. The results are massively bloated drawings
that can possibly contribute to their instability and definitely
increase their size. I've seen drawings with over 32000 RegApps from
one particular developer.

Typically AutoCAD won't let you purge a RegApp thats in use, so in
general you can aggressively purge them!

Terry
--
Never start any job without the right tools!
AutoCAD Add-on Tools at http://www.dotsoft.com

[Civil3DReminders_com]

There is a tool here to get rid of Reg apps in multiple files in one command. Worked in 2007, haven't tried it in 2008.

http://www.cadthinking.com/index.html

Christopher
http://civil-3d.blogspot.com/

[troma]

I'm resurrecting this old conversation because I have a similar question.

---

@Anonymous wrote:

...

Its a critical key for add-on developers to allow for appending information to AutoCAD objects. This could be used to store information directly on the object or to store an index to external information.

---

Can you be more specific or give a simple example of the type of data/objects etc you're talking about?

Should I be purging these regularly?  I know I can't purge something that's actually in use, so purging isn't going to ruin the drawing.  But on the other hand, is it possible that I'll want one of them later?

(For example, I could purge all my blocks, and only the ones not in use will be deleted.  But if I want to insert one of them later, I'll go to my insert box, and it won't be there for me in the drop-down.)

So my question is: will I ever regret purging reg apps?

[thepworth]

From one of the AU classes I attended w/ Peter Funk ('08, i think) I recall him saying that purging regapps wasn't a concern.

At the time we were running LDD & first getting into C3D.  I recall we had a few drawings that would "balloon" up to 3MB and purging regapps would drop it back around 1.2MB.

If you purge out blocks and want to use them later, you can always use design center to pull it back in from another drawing....

Cheers!

TdH

[troma]

Hmm, I know the blocks example isn't the best, because if I want a block and it's not there, first I know what I want and seccond I probably know where to find it and how to get it.

If I purge reg apps I will never ever know how to get them back or if I want them back.  If something random doesn't work in one drawing as it does in another I would never think of reg apps and even now if I did, I wouldn't know how to fix the problem

This worries me!  But the general concensus here seems to be "purge now and ask questions later"

I'm not running any third party software (that I know of) so I'm not sure why I'd have over 60 reg apps in my drawing.

[thepworth]

some of them are "historic" routines that facilitate promoting LDD (and similar "vintage software packages") data up into C3D.  

regarding previous experience, we'd find that some routine in our process would trigger our drawings "re-ballooning" with regapps (again).  so I think that they can be brought in on demand by the software behind the scenes - no action required on y/our part to get them back if/when needed.  not sure on this point but I do know that if you purge and work in a drawing for a while, or even purge a blank drawing just created from a template you can still have items to purge / purge again.  

so, dont worry & keep moving forward 🙂

[wfberry]

i think this will answer most questions concerning REGAPPS.

Bill

http://withoutanet.typepad.com/without_a_net/2010/03/managing-regapp-ids.html

[CJDominguez]

I just found one with 92,484 RegApps

[jamesd]

How do you find out how many reqapp id's are on a file?

[AllenJessup]

When you do a -purge > Regapps it will tell you how many were purged.