ACAD 2017 Stealing Focus (please make it STOP!)

[Anonymous]

Count me in as frustrated & annoyed at the way AutoCAD steals focus while opening multiple drawings.

I have a beefy machine with 3 moniteors, so I multi-task like crazy. I often need to open up several drawings in one window while continuing to work in another application. This takes a while, and each time another drawing is opened, Autocad steals the window focus. This often happens while I'm typing, which slows down my work in the other application and causes AutoCAD to stop opening the set of drawings. I have to switch to the Autocad window, delete the text and then go back to my other application. This is a real pain, and very poor practice by the developers. At the very least, they could make this a system variable that could be turned off.

Anyway.. enough of my soapbox. I've found a registry setting that supposedly fixes this. 'ForegroundLockTimeout'.. has anyone else tried this? Are there other side effects that I should be aware of before attempting this setting?

[john.vellek · Accepted solution]

Hi @Anonymous

Thank you  for suggestion how we can improve the product.

You are welcome to contact the product team directly through the Product Feedback page. The links below go into more detail about the best ways to make suggestions.
How to provide feedback on Autodesk products
Raising enhancement requests for Autodesk products

Another great option is to participate in the AutoCAD Customer Council. This is an opportunity for our customers to partner with the AutoCAD development team to improve future releases of AutoCAD by giving continuous feedback on ideas, designs, and early builds.
In order to get involved email [email protected] or [email protected]

[Anonymous]

I have the same issue with 2016.  I don't like to have my drawings print or publish in the background, so they run in the foreground of AutoCAD.  Issue is that I can't work in any other program during that time because AutoCAD steals focus over and over.  Sending emails while publishing is impossible.  And sometimes I just happen to type a 'c' at the right moment, which cancels my publish or plot.

Any more people having this issue?

[RobDraw]

Why would you expect AutoCAD to stay in the background, if you don't use the plot in background option?

[Anonymous]

Rob, the point is that AutoCAD repeatedly steals focus whenever it opens multiple drawings.

This is the case regardless of whether you're opening drawings for a foreground batch plot (like m177) or just opening them to view/edit (like me). It even happens when the AutoCAD session is minimized or behind other windows.

If one is opening a set of large drawings or has a slower network connection, then it can take a few minutes to open them. It's nice to be able to multi-task (answer an email, update a spreadsheet, etc..) while AutoCAD is opening everything up, and the focus-stealing makes this troublesome.

There is no technical or productive reason for AutoCAD to steal focus. At the very least, this should be a system variable or user-option. That way if someone likes the behavior they can keep it, and if someone doesn't like it they can disable it.

[RobDraw]

My response was to m177 and was not meant to address your issue. Sorry, for that.

There are a few things that I do that prevent me from multitasking and I've kind of just learned to live with it. There may be a setting that addresses your issue but I am unaware of it.

Does it bug me? Yes, but I've been dealing with it for so long, I am just used to it and limit my computer activity at those times.

[Anonymous]

Hi.  The original post is about how AutoCAD steals focus from other programs in Windows.  It steals focus from Outlook, IE, Word, anything.  In my opinion, AutoCAD should never steal focus regardless if publish in background is on or off.  When publish in background is set on, then you can publish/plot while still working in AutoCAD.  When it is off, then it is doing the task while in the foreground of AutoCAD, which means you can't do anything while it's doing that.

I've been using AutoCAD since R14 20 years ago.  I've never had stealing focus issues with AutoCAD ever... until now that I'm using AutoCAD 2016, regardless if AutoCAD is publishing or plotting in the background of AutoCAD.  So why now?

I'm on Windows 7 64 bit, but I've been on this OS since who knows... at least since AutoCAD 2013.

Anyway, to provide an example of the issue...

Now, when publish to background is set on, it steals focus from anything else I'm doing on the computer.  For example, I'm writing an email as I often do when my AutoCAD drawings are publishing.  I'm typing away and after a few words, AutoCAD just suddenly makes itself active and in the foreground, which makes my typing happen in AutoCAD instead of my email.  I click back to my email and start typing, then it does it again and again and again.  I can't work on my email because AutoCAD keeps taking the focus away.  And if I'm really unlucky, I just so happen type in a 'C' when it does steal focus, which then AutoCAD thinks I was hitting "C" for cancel publish.  All for nothing.

The reason why I quit publishing in the background since a long time ago is because sometimes with larger publish jobs, AutoCAD would often run into an issue and close out unexpectedly.  When AutoCAD closes out unexpectedly during publish, it doesn't know to restore all the temporary settings it made for the publish.  Menus and dialog boxes are turned off, but most importantly, AutoSave is turned off, too.  If I forget to restore all the settings back to how it was before publishing in background, then I become very screwed at times because AutoSave was never turned back on.

[Anonymous]

Oh, I didn't see wjd03 replied.  Robb, I have no idea why now this issue would start up doing this, but I may have no choice but to work around it as you suggested.

[RobDraw]

---

@Anonymous wrote:

I've been using AutoCAD since R14 20 years ago.  I've never had stealing focus issues with AutoCAD ever... until now that I'm using AutoCAD 2016, regardless if AutoCAD is publishing or plotting in the background of AutoCAD.  So why now?

---

I don't know why it wasn't an issue for you in the past. I've always planned on stopping any computer work when publishing.

[Anonymous]

I have the same problem. I do not want to loose productivity every time I want to publish. Please help. I have seen the same problem on the message boards for 209 and 2012. I use MAP 2016, Windows 7, 64 bit system.

[john.vellek]

Hi @Anonymous,

Is this happening if you set Publish in Background to on?

You can try this registry hack I found (at your own risk):

1. Press WINDOWS-R on the keyboard to bring up the Run window. Then enter REGEDIT and click OK.
2. Navigate to and select the following registry folder:
   HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop
3. On the right side of the window, double-click ForegroundLockTimeout.
4. Change the value to 30d40 (hexadecimal).
5. Click OK and then close the Registry Editor.

I know it worked in older versions of Windows.

[Anonymous]

Yes publish in background and when it is not selected.
I have the registry edit already and it did not help.

ERIK NELSON
DESIGNER

Phone: 208-288-6500

2041 South Cobalt Point Way
Meridian, Idaho 83642

POWER Engineers, Inc.
www.powereng.com

P Go Green! Please print this email only when necessary. Thank you for your contributions to environmental sustainability.

[john.vellek]

Hi @Anonymous,

I guess my only suggestion then at this time is to not plot in background. I have never used that feature as I have found it is always so slow and still uses resources so it offers me no advantage.

I plot foreground and even on large sets I have not had issues with it running while I work in other programs.

I will check to see if this has been submitted as a user request previously.

Thanks for your input.

[Anonymous]

I never plot in background. Thank you for your help. I can't stand to be inactive while it publishes 80 sheets, drives me crazy.

ERIK NELSON
DESIGNER

Phone: 208-288-6500

2041 South Cobalt Point Way
Meridian, Idaho 83642

POWER Engineers, Inc.
www.powereng.com

P Go Green! Please print this email only when necessary. Thank you for your contributions to environmental sustainability.

[RobDraw]

Is AutoCAD slower at processing the plot sets than the plotter is capable of?

Could this be more a network issue than AutoCAD related?

[Owner2229]

I've had the same issue and the registry hack worked for me, but not with the value 30d40 (hexadecimal) aka 200000 (decimal), but with 100000 (decimal).

In the registry you can switch to decimal and write in the value 100000 and save it (OK).

[Anonymous]

WTF! I lost all hope that I'd find a solution. But yours seems to be working for me.

After plugging in the new value, I immediately opened AutoCAD and published (not in background) but it didn't work.... but all I had to do (which is probably a pretty obvious thing to do for most) was restart the computer.

Thanks to you, I don't have to watch my computer publish huge sets of plans (or be subject to using publish in background with its flaws).

Btw, this doesn't just save me on AutoCAD stealing focus with publishing - it also stops it from stealing focus when I'm opening multiple sheets, etc.

THANK YOU!

[Owner2229]

You're welcomed.

I have to use AutoCAD to check thousands of drawing, so opening them and watching poping AutoCAD instead of doing something else became anoying realy fast, so I simply HAD to fix this issue and I was going to do anything to do so. After couple of minutes I've wandered to this tread and it gave me an idea to play with the value and after a couple of attempts it started working. So I thought you might want to give it a try.

[Anonymous]

I updated the registry setting and rebooted, and this still does not work for me.

I checked with some of my coworkers and they do not have this issue. My guess is that there is something specific with my customizations that is causing this behavior. I've compared all of our system variables and i cannot find any relevant ones that have any effect.

Once i finish the project that i'm currently working on, i am going to do a fresh, bone stock re-install. If that helps, then i will reapply all of my customizations one at a time from scratch.

It's still disappointing that there isn't a system variable that will force the desired behavior of opening multiple drawings without stealing focus.

[Anonymous]

I made the changes to the registry and rebooted and it still does not work for me either. I completed a full re-install yesterday I still have the same problem.


ERIK NELSON
DESIGNER

Phone: 208-288-6500

2041 South Cobalt Point Way
Meridian, Idaho 83642

POWER Engineers, Inc.
www.powereng.com

P Go Green! Please print this email only when necessary. Thank you for your contributions to environmental sustainability.