Customizing Icon Buttons

Starting with LDD V-14, the command menu in Autodesk expanded. Many screens aren’t big enough to accom- modate the volume of commands and toolbars available. One solution is to transfer command pulldown menus to flyout icon buttons. You may find using buttons easier than searching pulldown menus. It also gives you the opportunity to set up your drawing page the way you want it and maximize your drawing space. This is the way I do it: Each of the icon tool bars on the top of your screen has two gray bars on the left side of the tool bar. Right-click on any one of those gray bars on any toolbar. Pick “Customize” from the bottom of the list. Or; From the menu on the top of your screen: “Tools” CUSTOMIZE TOOLBARS Either way you will see a “Customize” dialog box with tabs marked “Commands”, “Toolbars”, “Properties”, and “Keyboard”. Pick the “Toolbars” tab. You will see two windows marked “Toolbars” and “Menu Group”. The menu groups in the right-hand window should include: ACAD, ACCOV, ACMAP, CIVIL, LAND, and SURVEY. Pick on the ACAD menu group. You will see a number of toolbars appear in the left-hand window. Some should be checked, most won’t be. Check a toolbar that is not marked. It should appear on your screen. By picking and dragging it by the blue bar on top, you can move it to where your other toolbars are, or off to the side. When the toolbars attaches to the margins of your drawing, It will lose the blue bar and the two gray bars will appear. To move it back onto your main screen, you can pick it up and drag it by the gray bars. If you un- check the box next to the toolbar name in the dialog box window, the bar will vanish. You can combine chosen elements of several toolbars to make one better one. If you want to modify an existing toolbar by adding or removing icons, check two or more toolbars so that they appear on the screen. When the “Customize” dialog box is showing , you may pick up and drag an icon button from one toolbar to another. A black marker on the target toolbar, moved by your cursor, shows you where the icon button will appear. When you pick the spot, it will appear on the chosen toolbar and permanently be a part of it. Or, if you don’t want an icon or several icons on a particular toolbar, you may pick and drag them onto the main screen. They will vanish.

So now you can substitute some of your menu items with toolbars. But, toolbars take up room! We’re not done yet! We’re going to make flyout tools from your toolbars. There may be some flyout icon buttons on your drawing already. They will look like the rest of the buttons but with a small, black triangle in the lower right- hand corner. When you pick and hold down these buttons, other icons fall out from underneath them. You slide your cursor down the column to choose your command.

Pick the “Commands” tab in the “Customize” dialog box. You will see two windows, “Categories” and “Commands”. From the bottom of the Categories window, pick “User Defined”. In the right-hand window you will see “User defined Button” and “User Defined Flyout”. Pick the User Defined Flyout text and drag the text onto your main screen. A blank flyout button is now on your screen. Right-click the blank button. A dialog box will appear, at the bottom of which is “Properties”. Pick “Properties”. Another small dialog box will appear telling you that it cannot find anything associated with the “Unknown” toolbar and that you should “associate another toolbar with this flyout”. Pick “OK”. That dialog box will disappear. The “Customize” toolbar changes and a tab with a window labeled “Flyout Properties” will be exposed. It shows all of the existing toolbars in the associated menu groups. Pick a toolbar to be associated with this flyout. For this exercise, let’s pick “Draw”. When you highlight the toolbar name, a series of icons will appear on the right-hand side of the tab. These are the icons representing the commands that will be associated with this toolbar. Pick the APPLY button in the lower right-hand corner of the tab. The icon at the top of the column will appear on the blank flyout button. Pick the “Toolbars” tab. The name of the toolbar you picked (Draw) will be highlighted. From the “Menu Group” window, pick the “ACAD” menu group. Slide the scroll button down in the “Toolbars” window until you come to an unnamed toolbar. It will be designated “Toolbar1”, or “Toolbar2” (or some other number if someone has been playing). It should be checked. Highlight the toolbar name. To confirm that this is the toolbar you just created, uncheck the box next to the toolbar name. If yours disappears, that’s the one. Check the box to make it re-appear. To the right side of the tab, there are 3 buttons; “NEW”, “RENAME”, and “DELETE”. Pick “RENAME”. Type the name you want your new flyout to be. If you started with “Draw”, call this “Draw Tools” or something like that. Do not copy the name of the toolbar (“Draw”) you used. You want to preserve the original toolbars. You may need them in the future. When you pick “OK”, the new name will appear on your flyout toolbar. When you pick “Close” on the “Customize” dialog box, your new toolbar is activated. Now, if you have that original toolbar (“Draw”) on your drawing screen, You can eliminate it by dragging it onto your main drawing screen and picking the little ”x” on the right-hand side of the blue bar. Replace it with your new flyout button.

Creating Icon Buttons From Scratch

So, now you’ve got some of the buttons you want, where you want them. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a button for a commonly used command like “Redraw” or “Regen”. You can create those buttons and add them to an existing toolbar or let them be a stand-alone button. Summon your “Customize” dialog box the same way we did on page 1 . Pick the “Commands” tab in the “Customize” dialog box. You will see same two windows, “Categories” and “Commands”. In “Commands”, find and pick “User Defined” again. This time pick the “User defined Button” text and drag the text onto your main screen. A blank button is now on your screen. Right-click the blank button. A dialog box will appear, at the bottom of which is “Properties”. Pick “Properties”. The “Customize” toolbar changes and a tab with a window labeled “Properties” will be exposed. This will look different from the Flyout Properties that you dealt with previously. The “Name” and “Description” windows are there. The button image is blank and, below it, you can see a display of existing defined button images. In the lower left-hand area of the box you see a large window identified as the macro to be associated with this button. The only text in the box should be “^C^C”. You are going to associate a macro command with this button and assign a symbol to represent the command on the button. First, you’ll do the macro. The command “REGENERATE” is issued by typing “RE” at the “Command” line. Place your cursor immediately after the ^C^C and type in “RE”. Do not have a space between them. The ^C^C is necessary. It makes sure that there are no other commands running when the macro is initiated. If this was not present, you could have some real crashes when two commands try to operate simultaneously. Now, we’ll come up with a symbol to represent that command. There are two ways to do this: Pick an existing symbol and modify it; or, create a brand new one. Just for fun, slide down the button to the right of the existing symbols display until you find one you like, Pick it. The symbol will now appear on your button. You could choose to “Edit” this symbol by picking the “Edit” button under the button face. For now, though, pick the “RESET” button under the existing symbols display. The Button face will go blank again. Your command also disappeared from the “Macro” window. Retype the “RE”. Now, pick the “Edit” button under the blank button image. You will get a dialog box entitled “Button Editor”. You get a color palette on the right, four drawing/erasing icon buttons across the top and four buttons across the bottom marked: “Save As”, “Save ”, “Close”, AND “Help”. From the 4 buttons on the top of the box, choose the one that looks like a crayon. Draw something on your button face. If you don’t like it, use the eraser icon to the right to erase the parts of your drawing you don’t like. If you want to start over from scratch, pick the “CLEAR” button on the left-hand side of the box and the button will go blank again. You might just draw the letter “R” to stand for “Regen”. When you get the image you want, pick the “Save As”. You will see a “Create File” dialog box. You are going to save this button image as a bitmap (.bmp) file. Find your Program files/ Land Desktop/ Support file. Open it. You will see, among other things, a bunch of existing bitmap images. Under “File name” at the bottom of the box, type in “REGEN”. Pick “SAVE”. That box will disappear. When you see your “Button Editor” box, pick “CLOSE”. You should still see your “Customize” dialog box. Pick “APPLY” from the bottom right-hand area of the box. The symbol you drew appears on the formerly blank button on your screen. Pick “CLOSE” from the lower right-hand corner of your “Customize” dialog box. The box will disappear, your computer will crank at little, and there you are, a brand new button. We have one more detail to attend to. First, pick your new icon button to see if it does what you intended. If it doesn’t, go through the steps again. You missed something. I will assume it does do what you wanted. If you let your cursor set on the button for a few seconds, the title of: “User Defined Button” should appear at the button. Let’s give it a proper title. Right-click the button. From the bottom of the long list, pick “Customize”. You will see a, now familiar, “Customize” dialog box. From the “Menu Group” list on the right-hand side, find and pick “ACAD”. In the left window, all the toolbars associated with ACAD are should. Slide down until you find your toolbar. It should be called Toolbar1 or some other number. Anyway, it won’t have a title. Highlight the toolbar and pick “Rename” from the right-hand side of the dialog box. A small dialog box entitled “Rename Toolbar” just popped up. Type in the name of your new button, such as, “REGEN” or “REGENERATE”. Pick “OK”. When you close out your “Customize” dialog box, the new name will be associated with your new button. You are now free to put your new button in a place of prominence on your screen.