Need help retrieving .ASV and various other woes

[Wendy Staub <ws1@ecdcsvr.Tredydev.Unisys.com>]

What follows is a laundry list of various DataCAD woes, probably due to my 
inexperience with the product.  Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

1) DataCAD crashed while I was working with voids in the 3D Entity menu.
   The message I got was something like: DataCAD internal error # 8. At this 
   point the system was hung, so I did a Ctrl-C to get out.  Now I am unable 
   to load the .ASV file. If I select the file from the load menu as I would 
   normally do at startup, I see "Warning: An autosave file (.ASV) for this 
   drawing is present.  Are you sure you want to continue?"  Of course I
   really want to load the .ASV and not the .DWG, so I opt out of the load. 
   I have tried changing the load path from \DCAD\DWG to \DCAD since this is 
   where the .ASV file is located, but the system doesn't permit me to load it.
   I can't type in the full filename at the prompt since it exceeds the 8 
   character limit with the .ASV extension, and I don't see any way to change
   the default extension for load files from .DWG to .ASV. If anyone can tell 
   me how to proceed, I'd also appreciate a pointer to the place in the 
   documentation where this is explained.

2) I am trying to model a cutout porch (picture an old Victorian). I 
   started out by making solid walls using the Architect menu, figuring 
   I'd punch holes in them later.  When I got to the 3D Entity Void menu,
   I found that I could only process a void in a polygon or a slab, so I 
   converted the sections of wall to slabs. Then I put a polygon in the shape
   of the cutout right in the wall where the cutout should go, selected the
   slab as the object in which to process voids, and converted the polygon 
   to a void.  I must be doing something wrong, because when I do a hide 
   on this area, the slab still appears as a solid wall. 

3) When I create windows and doors using the AEC_MODL macro, I use the 
   form provided with each to specify all the gorey details. Once an
   object is created, 
   (a) Is it possible to access the associated form information?  (Identify
       does not do the trick here.)
   (b) Assuming I can do (a), can I then modify the object by changing 
       some details in the form? How else would you modify an AEC_MODL
       object other than creating it fom scratch again?

4) I find that the Hide function (from 3D Views) takes forever (ie., several
   hours) if I have AEC_MODL objects in the mix. As a workaround, I turn off 
   the layer with the AEC_MODL objects, do the hide, and then turn the 
   layer on again.  This is not really an acceptable solution, since the
   AEC_MODL objects are scattered among layers (such as windows1, windows2,
   doors1, doors2), and the hidden line views I create are typically
   exterior views such as NE, NW, SE, and SW, so I have to divide up
   the AEC_MODL layers into exterior view layers in order to turn on
   the right set of objects.  Needless to say this is a real hassle
   and doesn't always achieve the desired result (case in point: the
   cutout porch I mentioned in 1) has windows that are partially hidden 
   by the exterior porch walls.) Am I just doing this the hard way? Surely
   there must be a better approach. I had also thought of having a 
   "shadow layer" for each AEC_MODL layer, where the shadow layer 
   would contain less complicated equivalents of each object in the 
   corresponding AEC_MODL layer.  This of course would be a maintanence
   nightmare, which brings me to my next question....

5) Is there any way to link an object in one layer to the same object in
   another layer, so that changes to the object in either layer would
   be reflected in its linked counterpart? 

6) When I first installed DataCAD 5.0, the current cursor coordinates were 
   dynamically displayed in the status area (small pane just below 
   the drawing area). I must have changed something inadvertently,
   because they no longer display.  How can I get them back? 

That's all for now, and thanks for reading this far!

Wendy Staub