Customizing AutoCAD 2000
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 Figure 2 |
 Figure 3 |
 Figure 4 |
 Figure 5 |
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It takes just a few minutes to create your own toolbar. You can create your own icons and commands, or drag them from other toolbars onto your own.
Open 2702.zip prior to proceeding with the rest of this demonstration.
1. Right-click on any toolbar, choose Customize. See figure 1.
2. Select the New button to indicate that you want to define a new toolbar.
3. In the Toolbar Name box, type Nuts and Bolts. Note that the new menu appears immediately in the Toolbars list. See figure 2.
4. Choose OK to exit this dialog box. A tiny toolbar appears on your screen. See figure 3.
5. Choose the Customize button so you can modify the toolbar.
6. From the Categories list, choose Custom.
7. Drag the blank icon from the Customize Toolbars window up to the new Nuts and Bolts toolbar. You can repeat this procedure to create a number of blank icons on this toolbar, if desired. See figure 4.
8. Right-click on the first blank icon in the new toolbar.
9. Place your cursor after the ^C^C characters in the Macro box.
10. Type ^C^C-insert;bolt;\ ;; to specify the command you want the icon to insert. The -insert text tells AutoCAD not to bring up the insertion dialog box but to accept options at the command prompt instead.
11. In the Name box, type Bolt Top. This specifies the text that will appear when the cursor touches this icon.
12 .In the Help box, type Inserts a bolt, top view. See figure 5.
13. Choose the Edit button and use the graphic tools to create a simple icon. See figure 6.
14. Choose Close to exit the Button Editor dialog box.
15. Select Yes to specify that you would like to save the changes made to your button.
16 In the Button Properties dialog, choose Apply to make your changes to the macro and button permanent.
17. Exit the Button Properties dialog box.
18. Choose Close to exit the Customize Toolbars dialog box.
19. Choose Close to exit the Toolbars dialog box.
20. Select the icon in the new toolbar to execute the command.
21. Select a point to position the bolt. See figure 7.
You can use the techniques demontrated in this lesson to create toolbars that insert blocks, place xrefs, create
text and load lisp routines.
Tip:
If you use the WBLOCK command to make the Bolt block a stand alone drawing, this toolbar will still work as long as the bolt.dwg file you create during the WBLOCK procedure appears in the AutoCAD Support Files Search Path. See figure 8.
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