Enter name of drawing to open?
Have you ever faced this issue – when you hit Open AutoCAD shows you this message Enter name of drawing to open <.> ? Bet you have, unless you are new to AutoCAD.
The first time I saw this I had uninstalled the whole program and then installed it again.. Well, that’s because I had no time to lose and that decision cost me five times more time than searching for the answer.
Now the problem is very simple it’s in one system variable called “FILEDIA” here is what Autodesk says about it:
Suppresses display of file navigation dialog boxes.
0 Does not display dialog boxes. You can still request a file dialog box to appear by entering a tilde (~) in response to the Command prompt. 1 Displays dialog boxes. However, if a script is active, an ordinary prompt is displayed. Prompts are also displayed if an AutoLISP or ObjectARX™ program is active. (Not applicable to AutoCAD LT.)
Note: Execution of scripts may temporarily hide the file navigation dialog boxes.
So every time you face this problem just type in Filedia in the command line and then enter “1” and hit enter. This should solve it for you.
In 2017 version there is cool little tool at the bottom that starts to blink if one of system variables is changed so you can easily see it and locate the problem, however sometimes it could be a bit too much, for example I like to change selection preview and it starts to blink… but that another topic.
