Hurricane Tutorials are now online!

Can Hurricane run in the Background?

Yes.

There may come a time when you want to process several thousand drawings, but don't want to tie-up a workstation all day.

Because Hurricane DOES NOT take over AutoCAD like some other applications. It generates a SCRIPT which is USED by AutoCAD to do the work you can easily run a second session of AutoCAD

Maybe minimize the "batching AutoCAD session" and run another AutoCAD session to perform manual edits, or get your e-mail, or other daily tasks without having to worry about your batch.

Depending on the power of your workstation, this can be easily achieved. (Actually once AutoCAD has started processing your files (using the hurricane.scr file), you can safely CLOSE Hurricane completely), and minimize AutoCAD. You can then start a second session of AutoCAD, and perform edits on OTHER files.

(Note: Hurricane can be automatically minimized when you create a batch script... see the Tools->Options menu, and look on the GUI Tab)

We have done testing with two sessions of AutoCAD, (each running a different script generated by Hurricane), both AutoCAD sessions being independent of the other, and a third session doing manual edits. (The number of AutoCAD sessions that can run together is dependant on the power/memory of your workstation)

Basically, once the script is created and AutoCAD is running it, you don't even need Hurricane running at all. AutoCAD uses the script file generated, so at that point you can either start the script in AutoCAD and shut down Hurricane, or create a whole new script and start another AutoCAD session and run the second script. (See the Options->Config Tab, as there is an "Alternate Output Script" location you can specify)

When you want to create a "second" script, just specify it's location and give it a different name, and if you want to run that from your second AutoCAD session, you can just type SCRIPT and select the [differentnamedscript].scr to run.

If your workstation doesn't have enough power/memory, you can adjust AutoCAD's application "priority" level to "Normal" or "Below Normal"

(Note: Use the taskmanager, CTRL-ALT-DEL -> Taskmananger in Windows 2000 (and right-click the acad.exe application and change it's priority. This way, things being done in the foreground (your manual AutoCAD session) will take precedence over what is happening in the background)