Having worked with AutoCAD users for many years, I know how a well-timed prank can break the tension in a room. Projects get tight. People get stressed. Tempers flare. Then someone slips into prank mode to let a little pressure out.
There are a few classics over the years. One of them chained every ZOOM to two UNDO commands and a SAVE. Funny until you lose work. Like most pranks, timing matters.
Keep it harmless. Keep it reversible. Keep your job.
I will not officially admit to what I may or may not have done in the past like the small beer bottle linetype that spread though an office, but I can share the best pranks I have seen, had sent to me, used, or received. Many come from seasoned AutoCAD users who know exactly where to poke the bear.
(With thanks to Lynn Allen, Mark Green, Harold, Scott Moyse, CivilGuy, Paul Munford, Patrick Emin, DaryIT, Chau Huh, Martin Kannegieter, Billy, and Matt Stachoni and many others for sharing many of these over the years)
The Classics
The “Tilted World” This is arguably the most effective prank because it is so subtle. Type SNAPANG and set it to 0.5 (or even 0.1). The crosshairs will be slightly tilted. When they turn on Ortho (F8), lines draw on a barely perceptible slant. They will check their chair, their monitor, and their sanity before checking the variable.
The “Hyperactive” (or Broken) Mouse Messing with zoom speed is a quick way to make a CAD user think their hardware is failing. Type ZOOMFACTOR. The default is 60. Set it to 3 (excruciatingly slow) or 100 (warp speed). If you are feeling particularly evil, set MBUTTONPAN to 0. Suddenly, the scroll wheel button opens the Snap menu instead of panning.
Shrink LIMITS to a tiny box Turn on LIMITS. Set it to something like one by one unit. Anything drawn outside the box triggers an “Outside Limits” warning.
Set SNAP to something absurd A giant snap increment freezes people in their tracks. The cursor jumps across the screen and they immediately blame their mouse.
Cap hatch lines at one hundred Lower HPMAXLINES. Anything more than one hundred lines disappears. They hatch the same area over and over trying to make it stick.
Swap a common alias Edit acad.pgp so PL runs HIDEPALETTES. The palettes vanish. You walk over and type SHOWPALETTES like a wizard.
Oversized grips Change grip size in Options so the screen fills with giant blue squares. It looks broken and they assume the profile corrupted itself.
Break Properties on purpose Set PROPOBJLIMIT to one. They highlight multiple objects and the Properties palette shows nothing.
Zoom extents to deep space Hide a tiny block miles from the origin. ZOOM EXTENTS shoots the user to the other side of the universe.
AutoLISP surprises Embed small alert messages in LISP or macros: (alert "Do you really want to do this, really?") Or drop invisible AutoLISP into Mtext and shrink the text to near zero height. When copied, it runs. One version changes paper space background colors at exactly four o’clock.
Screenshot wallpaper and dead mouse Grab a screenshot of their AutoCAD window and set it as the desktop wallpaper. Hide the icons and taskbar. Unplug the mouse. Sit back and enjoy the show as they try to click tools that don’t exist.
Hidden messages in linetypes Use micro-text in a custom linetype definition. It looks like a continuous line until someone zooms in and sees a tiny message staring back at them.
BADCAD mode Turn the crosshair lime green. Drop VIEWRES to 10 (making circles look like stop signs). Set APERTURE to 50. Make grips huge. Switch color schemes. Everything suddenly feels wrong.
Group the drawing Group every object as a group named “PRANK”. Selecting one thing selects everything. Ctrl+H toggles group selection when you need to “fix” it for them.
Toolbars from every dimension Run -TOOLBAR ALL SHOW and fill the screen with floating toolbars.
Match cursor and background color Go to Options > Display > Colors and make the crosshairs the same color as the background. They try to locate the cursor by instinct. They fail.
Move a dialog off screen Open a dialog, press Alt + Spacebar, choose Move, and push it off the screen with arrow keys. AutoCAD remembers the location. They open the dialog later and nothing happens.
Community AutoCAD pranks with full credit
These came directly from long-time users who know AutoCAD inside and out.
From Mark Green Change MTJIGSTRING to something like “Hi Bob” or “404 ERROR”. The MTEXT preview usually says “abc”, so seeing a custom message catches people completely off guard. Mark also suggested UNDEFINE on commands like MOVE or COPY. It returns “Unknown Command” and causes full confusion in seconds.
From Harold Drop a WIPEOUT and hide the frame. Something “disappears” behind an invisible curtain. Change plot styles to print everything as a dotted linetype. The look on someone’s face after a bad plot says everything.
From Scott Moyse Log into Vault inside AutoCAD and the Xref palette becomes a Vault browser. Users who have never seen this think AutoCAD is glitching.
From CivilGuy Use a wildcard like layer* in layer properties so the Layer Manager behaves strangely when new layers are created.
From Paul Munford Edit acad.pgp to remap shortcuts. He uses CC for copy. The prank version changes L to CIRCLE or O to ROTATE.
From Patrick Emin Ctrl + Shift + C triggers copy with base point. Hover over grips to see coordinates. Both features confuse people who do not know they exist.
From DaryIT Stay in TRIM mode by tapping space twice. Hold Shift to extend. When someone bumps the space bar, they think TRIM is broken. He also maps NORMAL to Ctrl + Q to replace ORTHO. Anyone else using the setup gets confused fast.
From Chau Huh Ctrl + Shift + U makes selected text uppercase. Useful. Also perfect for causing harmless chaos on a block of text.
From Martin Kannegieter Open the active PGP file quickly with: (startapp "notepad" (findfile "acad.pgp")) Great for building shortcut-based pranks more quickly.
From Billy Use MTP (Mid Between Two Points). When someone sees AutoCAD asking for two points unexpectedly, they think something is wrong.
From Matt Stachoni The AutoCAD that talks. Matt created a simple voice routine:
Lisp
(defun f:Speak (str / sapi)
(setq sapi (vlax-create-object "Sapi.SpVoice"))
(vlax-invoke sapi "Speak" str 0)
(vlax-release-object sapi)
)
(f:Speak (strcat "Hello " (getvar "loginname") " how are you today"))
He even limits it to specific usernames. Nothing freaks out a coworker faster than AutoCAD greeting them by name.
And a reminder
Most people find these funny. Some do not. Stick to pranks that are easy to undo and never damage work. A small change that is confusing but harmless is the sweet spot. If you use any of these, undo them quickly and teach how it worked. The best pranks become office stories because everyone comes out laughing.
If you have a favorite prank that has made the rounds in your office over the years, send it my way or post it in the comments. I am always looking for new material.
-Shaan
