Multiple Windows

[JohnC_ISM]

im searching and im finding the opposite issues or specifically the views of a drawing but thats not what im looking for

so far this hasnt been an issue until randomly this week i havent changed anything and yet somehow my open windows layout has changed. i want it to open multiple windows on the taskbar. not tabs or internal windows where i have to minimize inside of autocad i want to be able to switch by clicking the other window similar to the two windows shown in the attached picture. 

i never changed any setting yet it somehow changed.  see the image attached what i dont want

[pendean]

@JohnC_ISM right-click on the Windows Taskbar, select Taskbar Settings and explore... https://geekflare.com/customize-windows-11-taskbar/

[JohnC_ISM]

no i know how that works and in this example you can see that it already creates its own separate windows. 

[paullimapa · Accepted solution]

Sounds like you don’t want to open more than a single dwg in an AutoCAD session

With only 1 dwg opened see if command SDI returns 0. If it does change it to 1. 

[JohnC_ISM]

well that seemed to work. ive never even seen that option so im not sure how it changed at all.

[paullimapa]

Perhaps you might have ran a plugin that turned that option off and didn’t turn it back on?  But glad to have helped….cheers!!!

[JohnC_ISM]

now it went back to what it was doing and SDI is set to 0 already. it looks like it switched to tab mode up at the top. i know FILETABCLOSE but then it puts me right back where i started with two windows and one autocad thing in the windows taskbar

[JohnC_ISM]

heres what i mean. 

- i dont want tabs

- i dont want drawing 1 to open just the drawing i click

- and if i open two i want two autocad things at the bottom

whatever helps. thanks 

[paullimapa]

No you forgot. SDI needs to be set to 1 for what you want so AutoCAD only opens 1 dwg and no more.  Something must be turning this setting back to 0 which you don't want. Time to investigate what might be doing this.

[JohnC_ISM]

Okay that fixed that I accidently forgot I had a thing in the lisp to set it to 0 from last time I was messing with it.
Now how do I get it to stop opening up drawing 1 and the drawing I click on? startup is set to 0.

[paullimapa]

Set STARTUP to 2 

https://www.autodesk.com/support/technical/article/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/How-to-open-AutoCA... 

[JohnC_ISM]

Ive tried all start ups and they all open drawing one separately. I have no idea how or why this happens.

[paullimapa]

that's odd...both in 2023 & 2024 once I set SDI to 1 and STARTUP to 2 and I launch AutoCAD from the shorcut the program opens without loading a drawing like this:

[JohnC_ISM]

Its something with my setup. Idk whats going on because now after loading a big GIS shape file all my menu bars and palletes reset. I'm guessin this is just my computer because this is so annoying haha