Understanding impact of changes and related saves
Glitch
🖼️ 22 images Surveyor
I hope I'm asking this properly, so here goes:
One of the areas that I struggle with is understanding when making changes to tools, or issuing commands what is the impact of the associated save. What I’m trying to grasp is if the impact of the save is to the just the specific drawing file, to the template, or to the global environment.
Not knowing what level of operation I’m impacting makes me nervous to make the save.
1. Are there some general guidelines other than trial and error?
2. I see the template sub-directory, I can back that up to avoid problems at the template level; are there are other file types that I could create a quick cut and paste to restore the original program state?
3. Are there other ways to make sure that I can return the install to it’s original state (without a complete backup or re-install?)
Comments
Note that the files you are most likely to change (accidentally) are drawing tools. Symbol Catalogs can only be changed by loading the symbol catalog as a drawing (instead of into the symbol catalog window) something most people don't do and pretty much guaranteed wil never happen accidentally. Same with templates, you need to load these as a drawing to change them, changes in a drawing never change the template it is based on. Symbol catalog Settings are also somewhat easy to accidentally modify, if you click advanced in the select symbol catalog window.
Things that only affect the current drawing are changes to fill styles via the Fill style dialog, as well as editing symbols via the symbol manager. The latter only edits the copy of the symbol in the drawing, and not the global symbol catalog.
Drawing tools are part of the style template, so saving a modified tool will cause that tool to stay saved that way. It is better to pick the tool you want to change and then press the New button. A new tool with the same qualities as the one you wanted to modify will be created, and you can name it as you see fit. When you modify this new tool and save it, the tool will be saved alongside the other tools in that style, but it won't alter any of the tools that came with the style.
Similarly, if you get into modifying the textures and symbols of a style it is better to copy them and rename them as your own variations before you work on them.
Edit: Ninjad by a much better answer from Remy :)
Thanks! Makes sense.