remind me - where do I find PC prefs

[lavardera]

Every once in a while something will hiccup and I'll loose my palette layout. I end up manually reconstructing my arrangement - small time waster.

I used to keep a copy of my prefs for different screen layouts and load them as needed - there used to be a freestanding utility for that. I've lost track of all that as my need for it diminished.

But I would like to grab a solid copy so I can quickly restore my screen layout in the future. Where do I find the prefs file these days?

[Alfred Scott]

Greg,

Recommend you download the PowerCADD Documentation under development. Mentioned in another thread in the forum.

Alfred

[Rob C]

Funny. I just had to restore mine from a backup minutes ago.

I do still keep two versions of my prefs because of the desk=two monitors and road=one issue.

They're in the <username>/Library/Preferences folder. The Library folder has been hidden for a while, but option with the Go menu in the Finder reveals it.

[lavardera]

Belated thanks to Rob.

BTW my prefs folder was not hidden. And I was caught off guard by the proliferation of plist files for PowerCadd and Wildtools.

I saved just the core level plist files:
com.engsw.PowerCADD9.plist
com.engsw.WildTools.plist

And put an alias of the Pref's folder in with them, so its an easy drag to the alias to restore them.

Now I have to remember to periodically update them.

[lavardera]

Alfred - thank you, I've downloaded the Documentation (at least today's version).

I recall that there was a utility made at one point that automated saving and restoring prefs. I wonder how difficult it would be to roll that tool into PowerCadd and Wildtools. A command even in the preferences dialog that says "save prefs to backup", and "restore prefs from backup".

Ah well, easy for me to suggest, unknown how hard to implement.

[Alfred Scott]

Greg,

That was something Derek Dubout did, but that approach can’t be done now because of the way the MacOS works.

Alfred

[Rob C]

I've put aliases on my desktop for my preferences folder and the alternate preferences folder to hurry up to process of swapping them. I just learned that SketchUp no longer keeps pertinent window and palette info in the plist file, but rather in .json files under application support, etc. I want a utility to swap those as well.

[Derek]

Greg and Rob,

I have created two Automator processes to manage swapping the preference files in and out. These are Automator Applications so they run from the Finder.

One copies all PowerCADD's pref. files to any other folder I choose so I can have more than one set saved. The other copies all the pref files back from a folder just by dropping the folder on the application. You just have to make sure PowerCADD is not running at the time.

Everyone is saying preferences are cached by the system so swapping the files in and out wont work but it works on my Macs currently running Sierra and High Sierra. It also worked on previous versions of the OS but I'm not sure how far back that went.

I'm happy to share these Automator applications with anyone who wants them or perhaps I should show how to do it in a step by step guide. For anyone who uses Automator I'm attaching the two Automator windows so you can see the steps.

Derek

[Rob C]

Interesting.

I just recently tried swapping the .json files for SketchUp and that didn't work, so now I have now way to save palette locations for that program at all.