Reusing AutoCAD's Tool Icons as Starting Point for Our Custom Tools

[sbrusco]

Hi All,

As most people do, we are creating custom tools on the tool palettes and ribbon. It used to be that we could select one of AutoCAD's standard tool icons and then "Save As" to our icon library then modify it slightly so it looked unique. But it seems we can no longer do the Save As and I can find the collection of AutoCAD's icons to use as a starting point.

Does anyone know where they are and if not, any ideas to save me time starting from scratch?

TIA,

Sal

[pendean]

Autodesk has for some time dropped all of the menu icons in a DLL file with a similar name to the CUIx menu file it is supporting. Gone are the days of a folder full of BMP files.

Are you trying to modify a locked CUIx file?
Are you selecting Small or Large image in the APPLY TO section after you pick your icon in the button image section? You can't export the BOTH option.
Are you clicking on the EXPORT button afterwards in the button-image?
For the new image, are you selecting the little button with the three dots to find and select/choose the new image?

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

Go to the CUI interface and find a toolbar that comes standard with Autocad (i.e. draw). If you expand the cui window (right arrow at bottom right of window) this will expand CUI to show the button images installed by Autocad. There you can select an icon, modify it, and save as to a folder of your choosing (remember to point to this folder in OPTIONS). I wouldn't recommend saving your icons into the same folder that Autocad uses but rather make your own folder so that you can take it with you in the future.

[nestly2]

I believe the icons are initially embedded in the .mnr file that matches the cui name  (ie acad.cuix icons are in acad.mnr file)

However when you customize/save an icon, it gets saved as a ,bmp file in the .cuix file that the tool belongs to. 

BTW, cuix files are just zip files, so if you change the extension to .zip, you can see the CUI contents, including the custom icons which will be .bmp files

I don't recall how it used to be, but now you can use the "Export" button to save the icons as a .bmp in your icon folder (default location is C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Autodesk\AutoCAD xxxx\Rxx.x\enu\Support\Icons).  Edit it there, then "Import" it back into your custom tool.  When you click "save" it will be added to the same cuix as the tool, so you don't necessarily need to keep a copy of it in your icons folder.

[hattsoff]

Thank you!!! I'm using Autocad 2016 and I was wondering why the Icons folder was empty even though my custom toolbar icons (.bmp) were pointing to that folder.  I did what you said... I copied the .cuix and renamed it just to be safe.  Then changed the file extention to .zip .  I was now able to open the .zip folder and I could see all of my .bmp files I had created.    Mystery solved!! Thanks again!