Can I turn on and off the Civil 3D object enabler in AutoCAD?

[deke01]

I work with people that have different releases of Civil 3d. I know, they should all have the latest, but that is for someone else to police.
I work with plain ACAD. (I know I should have Civil 3d. Again, someone else to police.) I prefer to have the object enablers installed so I know what the proxy objects are and that they are there. Unfortunaely, if I have the version for my release installed, someone with an older release of the AEC program won't be able to use their drawing again.
Is there some way that the object enabler can be turned off and on as necessary as opposed to being uninstalled and installed?

@deke01,
john.vellek has edited your subject line for clarity: object enabler

[stevetamplen]

Hello deke01;

I do not believe you can switch them on and off like that.

Do you have a subscription?

If so, you can have older versions of the software installed. That way, you can open each drawing in the AutoCAD version in which it was created, and so not disturb the Object Enablers.

BEWARE: Do Not install older versions of AutoCAD over newer ones! Uninstall the new version, then install versions from oldest to newest, or you risk messing things up like a soup sandwich.

[deke01]

That's what i was afraid of.
Many versions and determining which version drawing created in to determine which version to use.
Not exactly elegant.

[stevetamplen]

I agree. We looked into turning the OE off in Appload, but they are .DLL files, so no joy there.

You might try doing an -EXPORTTOAUTOCAD to see if the files can be modified so that the users of the older software can access them again.

HELP shows this about the command:

Creates a version of an AEC file that can be opened in products such as AutoCAD.

You can create a new version of a drawing file with all proxy AEC objects exploded into basic objects. The new version of the drawing loses the intelligence of the custom AEC objects, but the resulting basic objects can be displayed and accessed in earlier product versions when object enablers are not available.

Let me know if that works for you.

[stevetamplen]

Hello @deke01;

Did the -EXPORTTOAUTOCAD help in getting the issue resolved?

[chauhuh]

Untested: Can you not turn off the demand loaded of the proxy objects so that they never get upgraded into the newer version? SHould be in options under OPEN AND SAVE.

Thanks.

[satkinsZGYU7]

What has been said so far is not true. It's quite easy to disable and re-enable Object Enablers.

Assuming your IT department grants you the necessary permissions on your local computer, disabling Object Enablers is as simple as renaming the install folder in Program Files.

See below:

Just rename them to something else. I personally prefer to change the year them to 2420.