The Price of an Icon
But enough complaining, you're hear to learn something about what ACAD r14 can do for you.
Many people like using icons. So they have tons of icons on their screen, yet out of the myriad of icons sitting there, how many of them do you use on a regular basis? Take for example the Dimension toolbar. It has 15 icons, of which, you probably use only 6. Yet you're wasting your screen with the rest of them. If you're the typical user with a 17" monitor, and if you spent about $500 for that monitor, then each Icon (1/4" square) you have on your screen is costing you just under 25 cents per icon. Now, admittedly this isn't much, but when you start adding it up, lets' say for 2 rows of icons, that number jumps to just less than $40 worth of icons. Now, considering, many people have icons on the left, right, top and bottom, this adds up to allot of real estate being lost to icons.
Most people don't look at it this way. However, if you look at the other side, how much drawing space do you loose with all those icons? How much time is wasted trying to find the 25% of the icons that you actually really use? You can however save yourself.
What to do:
1. Right Click on any toolbar.
2. Click the button that says "New..." You will be prompted to give the toolbar a name. Call it anything you like. You will see a new toolbar appear somewhere on your screen. It is rather small so you might have to look a bit to see it.
3. Turn on any toolbar that you normally use. You can do this by checking the box to the left of each toolbar name in this dialog box. You may have to move them around a bit to see them better.
4. You are now ready to create your new efficient toolbars.
5. Click the button labeled "Customize..."
6. You get a new dialog box with a pull down menu that contains every group of icons possible in AutoCAD, including the ability to make your own icons and flyout icons.
7. To place an icon in the new toolbar, simply drag it onto the new toolbar. If you want to copy an icon from an existing toolbar, drag and hold the Control key down. Without the control key you are simply moving the icons from one
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