Can't See Preview on Open and Save As Dialogs?

You know that we have been advocating opening AutoCAD drawings from within AutoCAD. Besides making sure you are opening your drawing with appropriate application one other thing that I believe is very useful is that you can preview your drawing. If you paid close attention you may have seen that preview is not listed under Views. If you can’t see your drawing preview during Open dialog or when using Save As then there is a way to turn it one. To illustrate, I am placing before and after images for you to look:

Before:

After:

So to make it work you would need to go to Registry.

Note: Don’t forget to take a special caution when working in registry. Making a copy of Registry Key is best way to ensure if you mess up you may be able to undo it. 

To get there please use Start>Run and type REGEDIT. Once in there browse to the following locations and set PreviewVisible registry key to 1.

For save as:

1. HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Autodesk\AutoCAD\R19.0\ACAD-B000:409\Profiles\<<C3D_Imperial>>\Dialogs\Save Drawing As 
2. On the right side look for PreviewVisible and double-click on it
3. Set Value Data to 1

For Open dialog:

1. HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Autodesk\AutoCAD\R19.0\ACAD-B000:409\Profiles\<<C3D_Imperial>>\Dialogs\Select File
2. On the right side look for PreviewVisible and double-click on it
3. Set Value Data to 1

Stay tuned!