Upgrade to QCAD Professional - Lost File Associations

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chrisc980
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Joined: Wed Jun 16, 2021 1:40 am

Upgrade to QCAD Professional - Lost File Associations

Post by chrisc980 » Wed Jun 16, 2021 1:45 am

Hello folks, wondering if anyone's seen this before.

I recently upgraded from trial to QCAD Professional, Windows 32-bit version 3.26.4.0. I uninstalled the trial version first, then installed Pro. Seems to be working great with one exception. Drawing file types (I've been using .DXF) are not associated with QCAD, and when I try to convince Windows to do so, QCAD is not available from the list of "default programs" to pick from. The trial version did not have this issue; it associated .DXF automatically on install. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling Pro, no change.

While not a showstopper, it would be nice to be able to double-click on .DXF files and have them open in QCAD as I could do before, rather than having to drag files over to the QCAD shortcut on my desktop or open them from within QCAD's "file" menu. I did some quick web searching but found nothing useful on a way to add an application to the "default programs" list; the general consensus was that the application should do this itself on install.

TIA!
Chris

CVH
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Re: Upgrade to QCAD Professional - Lost File Associations

Post by CVH » Wed Jun 16, 2021 4:32 am

Hi,
Same goes for *.dwg files ....
One would expect that ....

With a little tweaking one can associated both file types with QCAD.
Plenty of nice little tools out there to alter/mess up your file associations :wink:

Regards,
CVH

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Husky
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Re: Upgrade to QCAD Professional - Lost File Associations

Post by Husky » Wed Jun 16, 2021 8:32 am

Hi,

What is your Windows Version? Win10?
chrisc980 wrote:
Wed Jun 16, 2021 1:45 am
Hello folks, wondering if anyone's seen this before.
Yes - that is a Windows thing. Tricky but you can solve it when you know what Windows is doing.
Note: The Trial installation is used by Windows for the initial file association. An additional QCAD Pro installation can't overwrite that. First come first serve ...

How to change that:
Make sure the trial is completely removed. Especially the qcad.exe below C:\Program Files\qcad-XXX-trial-win64
(XXX = the used Trial Version).
Without this qcad.exe the file association is lost in windows.
Then look for a .dxf file - double click on it.
Because the file association is lost - windows will ask you which app should be used to open this file: "How do you want to open this .dxf file?"
Click the option "More Apps"
If it offers you to open the dxf always with this app - tick it,
scroll the list down and click "Look for another app on this PC",
navigate to your "new" QCAD Pro installation. It should be below "C:\Program Files\qcad-3.26.4-pro-win64"
look for the qcad.exe, select that file and click open. QCAD Pro will start and load the dxf ...

From now on you should be able to open dxf files with double click. Good luck! :wink:
Work smart, not hard: QCad Pro
Win10/64, QcadPro, QcadCam version: Current.
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chrisc980
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Posts: 2
Joined: Wed Jun 16, 2021 1:40 am

[Solved] Re: Upgrade to QCAD Professional - Lost File Associations

Post by chrisc980 » Wed Jun 23, 2021 2:17 am

Thanks for the input. FYI, this is Windows 7 (yes, I know :wink: ). No remnants of the trial version were there.

I was able to first unassociate Notepad from .dxf (which somehow had gotten selected) using this unassociate tool: https://www.vistax64.com/threads/unasso ... ype.91920/ Turns out this step may not have been necessary, but I was hoping that by unassociating, it would then allow me to associate QCAD. No joy.

I was then able to use this default program editor tool to set QCAD as default for .dxf: https://defaultprogramseditor.com/ Even better, the process of associating it for .dxf added QCAD to Windows' default programs list, so I am now able to select it for other file types (e.g. .dwg) without any special utilities.

Props to the authors of these tools, and hope if anyone else runs across this issue, the links above are helpful.

Chris

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