File Dialog questions

[hmspe]

There seems to be a problem with Autocad 2010 and Windows 7 where the built-in file open dialog can randomly crash Autocad.  The "official" work-around is to set FILEDIA = 0, but that's not a real world solution.  I'm exploring options and work-arounds, one of which is to use the file dialog in opendcl.  Two questions:  First, does anyone have something like this already put together that they could share?  Current office workload gives me very little time to work on this, and I'm starting at the bottom of the learning curve with opendcl if I try to program this myself.  Second, is it possible to change what's in the places bar?  I don't see anything about the places bar in the documentation. 

[BazzaCAD]

Current office workload gives me very little time to work on this

Wow, you're already using Win 7 as your office OS.... ?
I'm sure this we'll be fixed in SP1.

I don't think you can change the places bar.

[hmspe]

Going to Windows 7 was one of those waterfall things.  Autocad 2004 died on my production computer (which was XP Pro 32 bit at the time) and I couldn't get it to re-install.  2005 through 2009 are all shelfware here.  All were slower than 2004, and there was nothing new in any of them that was a "must have" feature for us.  We also didn't like the changes to the dialogs (simple was good) or the new icons and bitmaps on the toolbars.  Don't get me started on what we think of the ribbon....  Vista lasted about a week before we went back to XP.  We subscribe to the "business computers should be lean, mean, and fast" camp.  Anyway, Matt Stachoni had posted that Win 7 worked well so I decided to try it.  The Autocad 2010 + Win 7 combination works well for us.  We run Win 7 in "classic interface" mode with the eye candy turned off.  Autocad 2010 is running the with classic everything and our custom toolbars, but no ribbon. 

From the email I got from Autodesk from the crash reports I don't think this is on Autodesk's "fix it" list because Win 7 is not a supported operating system yet.  I suspect there will be a scramble to get this fixed in October when Win 7 is released and Autodesk is inundated with crash reports.

One of the things on my long term 'to do' list is to essentially recreate the 2004 era layer and plot dialogs.  We don't use layer filters, so a simple layer dialog fits well here, plus I'm more text oriented that "murky blob icon" oriented and I prefer a button that says "NEW LAYER" to a new layer icon.  On plotting the main issue is the change to having to do a dropdown to select 'window' before you get a window selection button.  It's a minor nuisance, but one that comes up frequently.  The goal is to have a company interface that can be moved relatively intact to the latest version of Autocad so we minimize the re-learning curve every year and keep productivity up.  I'm a lot more concerned with my company's bottom line than in trying to keep up with Autodesk's 'flavor of the year'. 

Martin

[Danielm103]

Are you running the 32bit version or x64, I've been running RC1 and Acad 2010 x64 with zero crashes. 

[hmspe]

x64.  Win 7 has been very stable here, too.