Trouble creating Icons for Icon menu

[cybertroluser]

Hi, does anyone know of a quick way to create new icons for the Icon menu?  I have a lot of blocks that I want to add to the icon menu, but making them through the block editor is slow and the result is very hard to see on the icon menu - but if I put the same icon on a toolpalette it looks OK.  Making slides (using mslide) gets similar unacceptable results, I have a library of old block slides that I could use if they could be made readable.  I would like to have ones similar to the stock Icons with some color and line thickness.  Obviously the slides for these were not created in the standard way with putting the block in a drawing and running mslide.  What would be the preferred background for making slides? White or black, it appears that the icon menu automatically detects this and just displays white, although I find sometimes it will occasionaly display one with black background and white geometry.

[jalger]

Hi Cybertroluser,

Normally when I get an image I'm not happy with I bring it into Paint.

I Edit the png that it captured, so that the link isn't changed.

To get some detail in the png i normally bump the number of pixels to 100x100 (its starts at a range of 20 - 40 x 20 - 40, depend ing on the version of ACADE you have installed)

When you edit the Png in paint you can add colour which is nice.

In truth you could use any program that lets you modify png files.

I hope this helps,

James

[cybertroluser]

Yeah, I did that and was able to get a result somewhat like the Icon menu, but if I have to do a couple of dozen... ugh

I didn't think about bumping up the pixels though I will fiddle around with that. Thanks, Craig Smith

[rhesusminus]

I create my PNG's in batch using the -plot command in a script, using DWG to PNG.pc3.

I also create a custom "papersize" of 40x40 pixels as this is what AcadE is scaling the images down to anyway.

[cybertroluser]

Interesting, how do you go about creating a papersize in pixels? I don't think I have ever done something like that... is it an option for the plot to png?

Thanks for replying

Craig

[rhesusminus · Accepted solution]

Just run the plot command.

1. Select PublishToWeb PNG.pc3

2. Press Properties...

3. Select Custom Paper Sizes

4. Press Add...

5. Start from scratch, and create a new "papersize" in pixels. Call it something like "40x40"

6. Press Ok and save everything until you're back in the polot dialog. Now, select the newly created "papersize"

7. Select Extents

8. Check Center the plot

9. Check Fit to paper

10. Select Portrait

11. Select acad.ctb for color and monochrome.ctb for black and white images

Batch processing this can easily be done via a script, using the -PLOT command.

[cybertroluser]

OK!  Fantastic!  I was able to figure out some of it and your detailed reply got the rest of it working, except, the output cuts off on the edge on some icons.  I had this problem with the ACE block editor when I created some icons, mostly when dealing with circles. Also lines appear very thin on the icon menu.  See the attachment to see what it does.  If I plot it with a ctb will It apply line thickness to the resulting plot will this thicken the lines?  I can't seem to affect that part at all but I may not be setting thickness in an acceptable range.  Any ideas, or is this how your icons look too?

Craig Smith

[rhesusminus · Accepted solution]

Yeah. Maybe you should use a custom CTB-file, with linewidths for all colors set to 0.13 mm or something...

Also, try using "Window" instead of "Extents". Press the ">Window" button, and copy/paste this code onto the command line:

(progn (setq max (getvar "EXTMAX")) (setq min (getvar "EXTMIN")) (setq x (- (car max) (car min))) (setq y (- (cadr max) (cadr min))) (setq dia (sqrt (+ (* x x) (* y y)))) (setq pct (* 1 (/ dia 100))) (setq ll (list (- (car min) pct) (- (cadr min) pct))) (setq ur (list (+ (car max) pct) (+ (cadr max) pct))))(command ll ur)

This will select the "extents" of the drawing, but add a 1% margin to the selection, so that most lines should be within the image 🙂

[cybertroluser]

Unfortunately that didn't work.  Selecting limits will cut it off, and it reports oversize on the "paper" regardless of whether I have selected fit.  After many trials I drew a box on defpoints and offsetted it what I thought was appropriate and just plotted extents and it worked.  You are correct that changing the line weight in the ctb will affect it, but it is very sensitive, incrementing & plotting different sizes does not have much of an impact until suddenly it becomes a bitmap blob. See attached clip to see results. In looking closer at the original icons it is clear that they didn't create them with just the geometry in the actual block and I don't think that I want to go to that much work right now.  Thanks for all you help on this - you pointed my way to a method that I haven't thought of.  I may use this method to temporarily get all the icon menu changes and then go back and mslide them because a slide library is so much more effficient than individual png's.

[cybertroluser]

Sorry, the attachments didn't go...

Craig Smith

[cybertroluser]

Okay Trond,  I happened to find our company's original "Slide Libraries" created years back.  All I have to do is to make some for new symbols and recompile the slide library.  Except... when I create the slide and assign it to a new icon on the icon menu, the image takes on the screen background color instead of the Icon menu background color.  What gives?  I have had trouble with this in the past, but we generally use black for a background color.  Is there a setting somewhere I can change this behavior?  Otherwise I will have to create 200+ png images & get someone to compile them into a DLL like the new menus are using, and I don't think I want to do that.  Any ideas?

Also I was mystified how autodesk got the icons to get their icons to look like they do.  When I make a slide or png for the Icon menu it doesn't look like theirs at all even though I am using the same symbol.  Mine look like when you view them with vslide.  Theirs are larger and use most of the available icon space and the likes are thicker and easier to view.  Maybe I should ask Doug McAlexander because he has done some work for autodesk on the ACE system files.

Thanks,

Craig

[rhesusminus]

I'm pretty sure that the images that come with AcadE are processed by Autodesk. Either with some image software or that they are "hand-drawn".

When you have created your PNG-files. you don't have to put them in a DLL to use them?

Just put them in the IMAGES-folder.

Slides: The slides are saved without any background color. When the slides are displayed, they inherit the background color of the viewport. Just the nature of things.