Using the AutoCAD Startup Suite as your Briefcase

March 3, 2019

We all have things that we take to work each day. Many years ago….NO, not in a galaxy far far away (Hey, I am not that old!) I had a briefcase I absolutely loved and took every day to work carrying some of my favorite drafting and design tools. I now have converted over to a backpack where I use to travel back and forth to the office as well as being my trusty carry on during flights across the country. That briefcase and now my backpack hold all my own favorite tools which I may need to use to do my job. The Startup Suite in AutoCAD is just like a briefcase or backpack carrying those tools you need and having that right by your side as you work each day.

One of the easiest ways to make sure your favorite tools are loaded in AutoCAD without any customization is adding those to the startup suite. The Startup Suite dialog box list the AutoLISP routines you are currently loaded.

You can access the startup suite by typing APPLOAD at the command line or on the manage tab of the Ribbon select load application as shown below.

You will now see your briefcase located within the dialog box. Select the Contents button.

Within the window you will see all the applications that are loaded each time you launch AutoCAD. Select the Add… button and the windows explorer window will open providing you the option to select any lisp files you would like to add to the suite. They will be in your briefcase each day and ready to use.

The one thing I like about the startup suite is that we all have commands that we like and use each day. I have a set of two letter shortcut lisp routines that I have become accustomed to. This is where you can still follow the standards of your company and add some tools that make the look and feel of what you do more familiar. What you have done is given yourself instant access to your tools!

You can add more than just lisp files – see the list below of file types you can add to your startup suite.

Note: You may get a warning that the routine is not in a trusted location. Best practice to to place all those files in a secure location then add that to the trusted locations folder in your support path.

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