acad2004 toolbar icons

We are trying to get up to speed on ACAD 2004, but when we try to use
our own menu, all the toolbar icons appear as question marks.

They still work. I.e. if you click on one, it does what the little
yellow message box says it will, but the icons don't appear.

Did they change these? If so, how do I correctly link up our menu to
the new toolbars?

Any help would be GREATLY appreciated.

 

Most likely your icons are not in the search path
(Tools/Options/Files/Support file search path). You should also be
aware that the icon size changed, and that the built-in icons are now
rcdata, not bitmaps. If your toolbars use built-in icons you will need
to modify your menu file to change the calls to rcdata. Look at the
toolbar section of your acad.mns file to see the new format. If you
drew your own bitmaps you will probably want to edit them to the new
size so they don't get stretched.

Martin

 

Open the mns file and do a find and replace. Replace ICON_ with RCDATA_
Hit replace all. Done. I have custom 16x16 bitmap icons from 2002 that are
fine in 2005. I think the problem occurs when you try to switch to large
icons.

I'm not sure about 2004 because I went from 2002 to 2005 but there are quite
a few internal acad icons that no longer exist so you may still get a ? on
some of them. The commands still exist but not the icons. The good thing
is that 2004 and 2005 can now run side by side with 2002 so to get back the
"discontinued" icons, I opened 2002 and saved the icons (in customize
toolbars) as custom bitmaps into a 2005 support folder. But then I had to
edit the mns and insert the bitmap names in place of the RCDATA_16_ICONS
that no longer exist.

Most AutoCAD upgrades are notoriously a major production even with all the
cute migration tools AutoDesk provide. And even though they now include
express tools on the install cd, AutoDesk went and dumped some of the
commands even though they didn't come up with new ones that made those
certain express tool commands obsolete. Some have been replaced (e.g.
Multiple pedit) and hence obsolete, but not others. I had to go to the
express tool support folder in my 2002 install, find the lsp routines and
icons (if they existed) and copy them to the 2005 express folder. A couple
of examples are layer unisolate and edit any text.

Still worse are the new locations of the support files. They are buried in
a path as long as your arm and most are no longer in an acad subfolder. I
realize this was done to facilitate multiple windows users on the same box
or network but what was the problem with simply creating different profiles
for the multiple users and having their desktop shortcuts open acad with
their profile? I guess there was too much chance for someone screwing up
another's profile. Yeah I have shortcuts to some of the support folders,
even custom toolbar buttons to take me there, but there are inevitably
occasions when I have to drill down to China to get to a file. Not to
mention that now I have to remember to back up not just the acad folder and
subfolders but also c:\here\there\where\over here\down
there\left\right\etc\etc\. I actually tried moving the whole mess to the
c:\AutoCAD 2005\support\ folder but the tool palettes objected. Should have
been an option on the cd for choosing support files location.

By the way, for anyone that actually read this far, whenever I open acad, I
have the startup dialog "open a drawing" appear. So far, so good. However,
acad never remembers the folder where I last accessed a file. The list in
the dialog is empty so I have to hit "browse". The Rememberfolders variable
is set to 1 which means (according to help): "Specifies that the default
path in each standard file selection dialog box is the last path used in
that dialog box."
Does anyone know how I can get the startup dialog to remember the last
folder accessed?

 

Until you reload the MNU file.

Put your support files wherever you want, adjust your support file
search path(s) as needed.

 

I tried moving all the support folders, but the tool palettes didn't like
that.