2004

Table Of Contents
Switch Between Dialog Boxes and the Command Line | 41
Switch Between Dialog Boxes and the
Command Line
Some functions are available both on the command line and in a dialog box.
In many cases, you can enter a hyphen before the command to suppress the
dialog box and display prompts on the command line instead. For example,
entering layer on the command line displays the Layer Properties Manager.
Entering -layer on the command line displays the equivalent command line
options. Suppressing the dialog box is useful for compatibility with earlier
versions of AutoCAD and for using script files. There may be slight differ-
ences between the options in the dialog box and those available on the
command line.
These system variables also affect the display of dialog boxes:
ATTDIA controls whether INSERT uses a dialog box for attribute value entry.
CMDNAMES displays the name (in English) of the currently active com-
mand and transparent command.
EXPERT controls whether certain warning dialog boxes are displayed.
FILEDIA controls the display of dialog boxes used with commands that
read and write files. For example, if
FILEDIA is set to 1, SAVEAS displays the
Save Drawing As dialog box. If
FILEDIA is set to 0, SAVEAS displays prompts
on the command line. The procedures in this documentation assume that
FILEDIA is set to 1. Even when FILEDIA is set to 0, you can display a file
dialog box by entering a tilde (~) at the first prompt.
FILEDIA and EXPERT are useful when you use scripts to run commands.
To use the command line version of a command
For most commands, enter minus (-) in front of the command.
For dialog boxes that open and save files, set the FILEDIA system variable
to 0.