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AutoCAD Productivity

UCSICON Options

by Michael Beall

From: AutoCAD Productivity Articles #146
Originally published: June 2016

The 2D UCS iconEvery five years or so I address the UCS icon, so here's your next installment.

General Insights

Note: There's an article on how to dimension 3D objects in Michael's Corner, January 2013. You will find more information on manipulating the UCS icon in that review, too.

See all the articles published in June 2016

Michael's Corner

Between 2003 and 2016, Michael Beall (and one or two guests) wrote almost 600 articles for CADTutor. The focus of these articles is AutoCAD productivity, and although some of them are now more than a few years old, most remain relevant to current versions of AutoCAD. The article above is just one example. Check out Michael's Corner for a full listing.

Tip of the Day

AutoCAD 2007 - Where's my old XREF Manager?

CUI Dialogue BoxA lot of people using AutoCAD 2007 and above don't like the new XREF Manager, so here's a simple way to get the old one back.

AutoCAD 2007 introduced a new way to manage XREFs and to bring up the "old" XREF Manager, you have to type CLASSICXREF at the command line. Well, if you want things back the way they were and use the classic XREF Manager as the default from the keyboard and from the menu, a few adjustments will get you there…

First, go to Tools ❯ Customize ❯ Edit Program Parameters (acad.pgp). This command opens the ACAD.PGP file in Notepad. This is where all the keyboard shortcuts are defined.

Next, scroll down until you see XR (or use Edit ❯ Find…), change the value from *XREF to *CLASSICXREF and save (File ❯ Save). Close Notepad and return to AutoCAD. Enter the command REINIT, check the "PGP File" checkbox and click "OK". That fixes the keyboard so that next time you type XR, you'll see the old manager and not the new one.

To change your Menu, type CUI at the command line. In the "Customizations in All CUI Files" pane of the "Custom User Interface" dialogue, go to Menus ❯ Insert ❯ External References… and click on it once to highlight it.

Now, in the "Properties" pane, change the "Macro" setting from ^C^C_externalreferences to ^C^C_classicxref, click "OK" to save the changes and you're done.

Today's tip is by StykFacE

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