Tech Tips
As part of our valued support services, AllyCAD Tech Tips are published regularly in response to the more frequent support requests received. If you have a request for Tech Tip on a specific topic, please email our support staff.
Customising AllyCAD
This Tech Tip explains how to customise the way AllyCAD looks.
This is the default layout when opening AllyCAD 2010 for the first time:
Making the changes
Settings Menu › System Settings
Visual Style
AllyCAD can use 3 different built in themes or visual styles, the default is Office 2003 (blue theme), Classic and Office XP, these styles change the colour of the main program window.
Default line weight
Select the actual line weight to be used for entities created with a line weight specified as Default.
Prompt text colour, background (BG) colour, Paper border colour
The pen colour of the prompt text may be modified and the background used. Click on the colour button to change the colour, the colour dialog will appear allowing you to change the colour.
Default pen palette
AllyCAD 2010 ships with multiple pen palettes, the default has been set to AutoCAD. Clicking on the dropdown, allows you to change the pen palette used.
Various other interface changes may be customised
Show splash screen
The splash screen that appears when opening the program, may be switch off, this will reduce program loading times.
Show dialog tooltips
Switch off the dialog tooltips, these tips provide basic help. When the mouse is moved over an option on a dialog a tip will appear.
Large toolbars
If this item is selected the program will use 24 x 24 pixel toolbar images rather than the standard 16 x 16 pixel images.
31 pen toolbar
If this item is selected the automatic pen toolbar will display buttons for 31 pens instead of the standard 15 pens.
Visible snaps default on
The program with show a visual indicator as you move the mouse showing possible snap positions.
Show prompt tooltips
If this item is selected the current prompt will be displayed as a tooltip at the cursor position when running functions. This is only available on Windows XP.
Use smaller dialog bar
If this item is selected the program will use a smaller power bar if you have a restricted screen size (as on wide screen laptops for example). The limitation of this smaller bar is that you will not be able to change the current drawing settings (pen, layer, linetype, etc.) while busy in a function.
Show ruler
If this item is selected the program will display a horizontal ruler in all views. The ruler is scaled according to the drawing and can be used to estimate sizes.
Show selection handles
If this item is selected the program will show grip handles for the selection set. If this is not set then only selection nodes are displayed. Grip handles allow moving and resizing of the entire selection set, selection nodes allow moving and resizing of individual entities in the selection. You can also toggle between these modes using the Toggle Node/Handle Selection command on the main menu, and on the right-click menu.
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