Icon Menus in 2006

I am now running Acad2006 and I cannot seem to find a good instruction tutorial on making Icon menus like I did in R14.

I tried the Palettes menu and was not very impressed, seems to take a dogs age to make one up if you have many, many blocks, and the icons appeared too small?

Is it possible to make up decent Icon menus in the new CUI menu.

Or can anyone point to a good tutorial link?

Thanks

Max.

I assume you are talking about Image Tile Menus.

You should still be able to load your image tile menus in 2006.

I use 2005 so I can't help you there.

I use tool palettes sometimes, but like you, don't like the small icons or much else about them.

As you found out, the key to tool palettes as created by design center, is to have all the blocks you want on one tool palette tab in a single drawing.

A lisp to import all the drawings in a directory can be found here:

http://www.cadtutor.net/forum/showthread.php?27790-Insert-Multiple-blocks-into-drawing/page3&highlight=Newblk

You may need membership at the swamp.

Look for the code by CAB for Block Import Lisp.

Another route is to use a block manager. Terry Miller has a good one that that is much like image tile menus and can be found here:

http://web2.airmail.net/terrycad/AutoLISP-Code.htm

Look for Blk_Lib.lsp, Blk_Lib.dcl, and Blk_Lib.doc. You will also need GetIcon.lsp on the same page.

It is updated to work through 2008.

Image tile menus are very old methods and difficult to manage.

To put your hands on tool palettes, I will get you a sample project on Tool palettes.

1. Create some blocks (wblocks, separate dwg files and keep in a folder)

2. Select all these drawings and drag to the tool palette.

3. Right click on any tool palette item and click on properties.

4. You can pre-set the properties on the inserted block.

5. You can assign macros to the tool palette icons.

6. Tool palette icons can be re-sized using Right Click-->'View Options'

Hope this helps...

Tool Palettes are the way to go, have a look at the case study in this link: http://www.autocadtrainerguy.com/

1. Create some blocks (wblocks, separate dwg files and keep in a folder)

2. Select all these drawings and drag to the tool palette.

You need all your blocks in a single drawing not as separate ones, otherwise you will be making a load of unecessary work for yourself,

Tool Palettes are the way to go, have a look at the case study in this link: http://www.autocadtrainerguy.com/

 

You need all your blocks in a single drawing not as separate ones, otherwise you will be making a load of unecessary work for yourself,

I think you are right in case of a single user. But what if you want to distribute the palette to multiple users based on a single block library kept in the network. I mean if I lose that particular drawing(where blocks are kept), my palette will be useless. Please correct me if I am wrong.

We run tool palettes over a network with around 10 users and it works well. You only have one lot of admin when something changes and all the palette files and block drawing are saved on the server, with the appropriate path settings made on each machine. You don't loose drawings!!! Always keep a copy tucked away out of harms way.

Can you use tool palettes on AutoCAD 2006? I have a feeling they came in later.

Can you use tool palettes on AutoCAD 2006? I have a feeling they came in later.

Tool palettes are introduced in 2005.

Have you tried using Design Center?

Thanks for the answers so far, I will try some out, I am just waiting for delivery of a couple of 2006 manuals that may show me the way, for now I did import my old R14 menu and I get my old Icon Pull downs , but the rest of the ***POP pull downs in the .MNS file are also the older R14 version, unless I can get the Palette icons to display better, I may see if I can import my Icon slides into the CUI menu format.

Thanks

Max.