About Playing Back an Action Macro

After an action macro is recorded with the Action Recorder, you can play back the series of recorded commands and input values.

You play back an action macro from the Action Recorder panel. You can also enter the name of the action macro at the Command prompt. As an action macro is played back, you might be paused for input or requested to respond to a message or requested to insert a base point.

Based on the current action or request for user interaction in the action macro, an icon near the cursor is displayed to indicate when the action macro needs input in order to continue. A dialog box may be displayed where you enter a value or use the recorded value.

As an action macro is played back, the series of commands are performed one after the other until playback is complete or an error is encountered. Some of the reasons for the playback to stop or fail are as follows:

• Invalid command. The command that is defined in the action macro is unknown. The action macro might have been recorded in a different product or contains custom commands or macros that are not loaded.
• Empty selection. The current action expected a selection set of objects, but no objects were selected.
• Macro cancelled. The Cancel button in one of the dialogs boxes was clicked.

Location of Action Macros

When you record an action macro, it is saved to the path defined by the system variable ACTRECPATH. For playback, paths are defined by the system variable ACTPATH.

Both sets of paths are used when loading and playing back an action macro. In the Action Recorder Settings node on the Files tab of the Options dialog box, you can to set the paths used for both recording and reading action macro files.

Record and Modify Action Macros

Recording and modifying action macros is done with the Action Recorder panel on the ribbon.