Loading…
0
My AutoCAD macros were deleting layers instead of copying them
Spent 2 years at my drafting job in Columbus using lisp routines I copied from a 2008 forum. Last week a coworker ran one and watched three floors of a hospital plan vanish. Turned out my old macro had a bad variable name that clobbered whatever layer was active. Anyone else running ancient scripts they never actually audited?
1 comments
Log in to join the discussion
Log In1 Comment
drew_hart41mo ago
That bad variable name" part hit close to home. I had a similar thing happen back in 2011 with a batch plot routine I'd written for a retail fit-out. It worked fine for years, then one day it started renaming all the title blocks to "PLOT_1" through "PLOT_87" instead of leaving them alone. Turns out I'd used a global variable that another new script I added was also using, so they were stepping on each other. The worst part is I only caught it because a project manager noticed the drawing list looked odd, not because I ever tested the combo. I spent a whole weekend combing through old forum threads to figure out what changed. Now I keep a rule that any script older than five years gets a fresh look before I let anyone else touch it.
2