About Switching Between Dialog Boxes and the Command Line

If you use scripts, you can run a command by displaying prompts on the command line instead of using a dialog box.

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 restrict the dialog box and display prompts to 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-based applications and for using script files. There may be slight differences 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 command 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.
• HPDLGMODE controls the display of the Hatch and Gradient dialog box and the Hatch Edit dialog box.

FILEDIA and EXPERT are useful when you use scripts to run commands.