Not too long before the launch event for AutoCAD 2010, Shaan Hurley made a post on his blog “Office AutoCAD Pranks”. Shaan’s post ended up being the topic of discussion for one of the more candid conversations the bloggers Autodesk invited to San Francisco had. I don’t need to tell you what can happen when you gather a bunch of bonafide AutoCAD geeks in the same room. Needless to say, the pranks we dreamed up ranged from harmless to all out cruel. In the spirit of April Fools Day I thought I’d share some of these pranks with you the readers of The CAD Geek.
Now, before we begin, some of the pranks you’re about to read may get your fired from your job. Unless you really want to give your boss a darn good reason to fire you, please use your common sense before actually performing any of these pranks!
Embed messages into the ACADDOC.lsp file.
ACADDOC.lsp gets loaded for every drawing. Put something like this in the victims acaddoc.lsp file, and wait for their reaction.
(alert “Autodesk has detected usage that is in direct violation with the license agreement for AutoCAD 2009.\n\nYour system configuration and usage statistics have been sent to the anti-piracy division of Autodesk.\n\nAutoCAD 2009 will now close.”)
(command “_close”)
Create a GROUP of the entire drawing
It’s been my experience few people know about the GROUP command inside AutoCAD. It’s intended use was to be a cross between a normal drawing object and a block. Nonetheless, the following command sequence will make it so every object in their drawing highlights when they select just a single object
-GROUP
CREATE
PRANK
PRANK
ALL
To have even more fun with this prank, when the victim calls you over to their computer to take a look, press Ctrl + H real quick. This will toggle groups off, so you can then select objects individually. Before you leave the victims desk, press Ctrl + H to turn groups back on.
Turn BLIPMODE on
AutoCAD will place a + everywhere you unsuspecting victim clicks. The “blips” will stay until he/she runs a REGEN.
Turn on and shrink the LIMITS of your drawing
With the processing power of today’s CAD workstations, LIMITS is a largely forgotten command. Nonetheless, when turned on, a user cannot draw anything outside the drawing LIMITS. Thus if you do something like…
Command: LIMITS
Reset Model space limits:
Specify lower left corner or [ON/OFF] <0.0000,0.0000>: 0,0
Specify upper right corner <4000.0000,4000.0000>: 1,1
Command:LIMITS
Reset Model space limits:
Specify lower left corner or [ON/OFF] <0.0000,0.0000>: ON
Your unsuspecting victim will get something like this when they try to draw a line…
LINE Specify first point:
**Outside limits
Make the cursor color and the background color the same
A black background + black cursor = one freaked out user.
To play this prank go to the Display tab within the OPTIONS command. Click on the [Colors] button. Find the Crosshairs Interface Element, and set it to whatever the background color is.
Display EVERY toolbar known to AutoCAD
To pull this incredibly cruel, but rather harmless, trick enter the following at the command line:
-TOOLBAR
ALL
SHOW
Be sure to use the hyphen to execute the command line version of the TOOLBAR command.
Thank goodness fixing this one is as simple as restoring your favorite workspace.
Erase All, and SAVE twice
If this one doesn’t get you fired, it darn well should! At the command line:
ERASE
ALL
QSAVE
QSAVE
Keep in mind the BAK file is always 1 version behind the DWG. Thus by saving twice the BAK and the DWG will be the same. Before trying this one Open resume.doc, Print…
Set SNAP to something ridiculous and turn it on
To pull this prank:
- Enter SNAP at the command line
- Enter a value like 10,000
- Use the SNAP command to turn it on, or just press F9
- Sit back and watch as your victims cursor jumps all over the place.
Turn off the MTEXT formatting toolbar
A lesser known system variable is MTEXTTOOLBAR. When this bad boy is set to 0, your victims MTEXT Toolbar will never display (until they find this blog and set it back to 2)
Change the MTEXT sample text
By default when you go to place a piece of MTEXT you get “abc”. Change the MTJIGSTRING system variable and it can be anything you want (so long as it’s less than 10 letters).
Save all BAK files to the Desktop
Everyone loves Express tools, especially when they can be used in a fun little prank. Within the Express Tools arsenal of commands is one named MOVEBAK. Set this to say the path of your victims desktop, and watch their desktop fill up with a BAK file for every DWG they save.
UNDEFINE a common command (like SAVE)
Another rather unknown, and also incredibly dangerous command is UNDEFINE. In essence you can UNDEFINE any command in AutoCAD. Maybe you UNDEFINE the LINE command and make the LINE command point to the QQUIT command.
Hide everything but the Drawing Window
Pressing Ctrl + 0 will hide everything but the drawing window (including menus/ribbon). Ctrl + 0 won’t hide the command line, but Ctrl + 9 will.
Move a common dialog off the screen
Open a common command, press Alt + Spacebar. You’ll get a little sub-menu with the option to Move the dialog. Use the arrow keys to move it off the screen. To make AutoCAD remember the location, use the Enter key to exit the dialog.
Insert your favorite prank here…
Have a great prank of your own that you would like to share? Post it in the comments of this post, and let your fellow The CAD Geek readers die in laughter this April Fools Day, and make those who don’t know about The CAD Geek wish they did.
Happy April Fools Day!
SNAPANG and set some sort of crazy angle. Nothing quite as disorienting as trying to draft with off-kilter crosshairs and non-horizontal orthosnap.
*Note: this stays within the file, so if multiple people open the file, they can all be annoyed.
SNAPANG and set some sort of crazy angle. Nothing quiet as disorienting as off-kilter crosshairs and orthosnap.
*Note: this stays within the file, so if multiple people open the file, they can all be annoyed.
Set the MBUTTONPAN to 0 and the ZOOMFACTOR to either 3 or 100 (Min and Max) and watch the fun.
Back in the AutoCAD 12 days when blip modes were on by default I did this prank to one of my students.
He was in the habit of performing a couple commands and then hit “R” to clear out those blip modes. When he went on break I entered the following:
(defun c:r ( / )
(setvar “cmdecho” 0)
(command “-layer” “off” “*” “y” “”)
(setvar “cmdecho” 1)
(princ)
)
Well when he came back from break and did the usual couple commands and then hit “R” his screen went blank. He panicked! Then he got his drawing to show again. So he did couple commands and then hit “R” his screen went blank. He panicked! Then he turned to me and asked, “What did you do?!” I smiled and said, “Save your drawing and restart AutoCAD.” Then everything was fine again.
hello, I was just having some April Fools day fun using the funny characters … based pranks see Donnie's post!
hi, April Fool's Day is just around the corner, what better way than to celebrate!
I like to size their pickbox to match the screen
hee hee
I like to size their pickbox to match the screen
hee hee
Jose, Mark, Theodor, Sean – I like where your minds are headed, and hope you each had a great April Fools Day!
Jose, Mark, Theodor, Sean – I like where your minds are headed, and hope you each had a great April Fools Day!
I always used the fake .pgp file with the common keyboard shortcuts re-keyed, ex. “L” – circle. “O” – rotate.
These are much better, IMO!
I always used the fake .pgp file with the common keyboard shortcuts re-keyed, ex. “L” – circle. “O” – rotate.
These are much better, IMO!
just turn QTEXT on… all text will be displayed as rectangles, turning off is usually not enough, takes a regen to see text back
just turn QTEXT on… all text will be displayed as rectangles, turning off is usually not enough, takes a regen to see text back
Wow…
Why not write an manual?
“Driving crazy a CAD user”
You might be onto the foundation of another thread all together. Something like – “Top 10 CAD Books never published”
Wow…
Why not write an manual?
“Driving crazy a CAD user”
You might be onto the foundation of another thread all together. Something like – “Top 10 CAD Books never published”
Another one that is more of an office prank that makes it way around our office frequently. Take clear tape and tape down the phone receiver switch. When the victim picks up that phone…NOTHIN…
Another one that is more of an office prank that makes it way around our office frequently. Take clear tape and tape down the phone receiver switch. When the victim picks up that phone…NOTHIN…
Thats just evil. ..
I did hear of folks using the Action Recorder to do something like “erase” “all” and then saving it as a common shortcut , seeing as how you can’t over-write AutoCAD commands in the recorder, but you could save it as say .. “l” .. which is a common shortcut for the line command.
jus sayin’
btw-Kicked ur post over at:
http://www.cadkicks.com/adkautocad/AutoCAD_Pranks_for_April_Fools_Day
Thats just evil. ..
I did hear of folks using the Action Recorder to do something like “erase” “all” and then saving it as a common shortcut , seeing as how you can’t over-write AutoCAD commands in the recorder, but you could save it as say .. “l” .. which is a common shortcut for the line command.
jus sayin’
btw-Kicked ur post over at:
http://www.cadkicks.com/adkautocad/AutoCAD_Pranks_for_April_Fools_Day
This isn’t CAD-specific, but a couple years ago, my husband’s secretary used a small post-it to cover up the laser on the bottom of his mouse. I think he re-booted his computer twice before he thought to check his mouse. Priceless.
While it may not be CAD specific, it’s certainly CAD related, after all we use a mouse to use CAD :)
This isn’t CAD-specific, but a couple years ago, my husband’s secretary used a small post-it to cover up the laser on the bottom of his mouse. I think he re-booted his computer twice before he thought to check his mouse. Priceless.
While it may not be CAD specific, it’s certainly CAD related, after all we use a mouse to use CAD :)