Loading...By now I’m sure most folks are familiar with the “tab switchers” available for use in AutoCAD. There are five that I know of:
- Drawing Tabs by CAE-Link Corp. FREE. This version is very small and light, works on AutoCAD 2005-2007 (and probably 2008), and puts tabs at the top or bottom of your drawing screen for all your open drawings. go get it
- AcadX Tabs by CADDZONE. Not Free. This is another version that is very small and rock solid. It offers the added advantage of offering immediate access to any layout in a drawing by right clicking the tab. If you use a lot of layouts in a single drawing this one might be worth the $99 (for up to 6 users). go get it
- Autodesk Bonus Tool Drawing Tabs ARX. FREE. One of the programmers from Autodesk created this little utility that is the simplest of the bunch. (Why it hasn’t been incorporated into the full product, I don’t know.) go get it
- DocBar by CadWerx. Not Free. This version used to be my favorite before they started charging for it. It is by far the most advanced. Docbar allows you place the tabs top, bottom, left or right. There are a ton of right click options as well. The best part about DocBar is that you can elect to see a thumbnail preview of each drawing – very handy for those who are forced to use some archane file naming convention. A personal license is $45, and you can try before you buy. go get it
- iDwgTabs by BizIcom. recommended! FREE. This drawing tab program also offers thumbnail previews an a variety of rick click options. (Not as many as DocBar or AcadX, however). The most notable being the Save and Close all. Part of the install is an ini file that can be customized to control the right click menu options and labels. It’s not easy to find the latest version but I think you can find it here from our good friends at Cadopolis.
So anyway, these are nice, but not really the reason I started this article. The real tip here is for those folks who work in multiple drawings in multiple sessions of AutoCAD. I find myself doing this more often than not in order to take full advantage of my dual monitors. I recently became frustrated with the realization that – since my OS is XP Pro and not Vista Ultimate – I spend a lot of time clicking thorugh taskbar items to find the drawing I want. So I went on a quest for a better solution for cycling through open applications. Here is what I came up with:
- Alt-Tab Replacement XP Power Toy. This is a freebie from Microsoft that replaces the basic alt-tab icon cycler with one that shows thumbnail previews of all open windows. Not much else to it and I’ve found better solutions, but the other power toys are worth checking out. go get it
- Alt-Tab Thingy by Nymtec. Yes – that’s the real name. It’s a freebie that offers some customizable options to go along with the thumbnail preview. I found it had issues with minimized windows but it does offer taskbar icon previews in addition to the alt-tab previews. go get it
- TaskSwitchXP by ntwind. recommended! This is the alt-tab solution I settled on. I had the right combination of functionality, display, and customization options. It offers things like displaying a list of the open apps instead of icons next to the good sized thumbnail preview, excluding apps of your choice, and changing the hot keys to something other than alt-tab. Oh, and it’s free. go get it
- Shock Aero. This is a free app that mimics the “3D Flip” feature of Vista Ultimate. It will also tile all the open windows which I understand is a Mac thing (so is the 3D Flip feature in Vista, but not a discussion I want to get into…). It’s pretty cool and gives a nice large preview of the application window. I thought it was a little slow and I like the features in TaskSwtichXP better, but it’s worth a look. go get it
- Visual Tool Tips by Chris’n'Soft. This little program will add visual icons to your task bar items. As you hover over the taskbar, a thumbnail preview is display over the item. The program gives you a lot of control over the style and visual display of the preview. I found it to be a bit much but if you have a custom Windows theme it may be the one for you. I also discovered that if you have “collapsed groups” (like when you have 25 internet explorer windows open), you don’t get a preview even if you expand the group vertically and hover over the individual entries. go get it
- Visual Task Tips. recommended! Not to be confused with Visual Tool Tips, this app is smaller, lighter and does not offer all the customization of the former. However, it does work great and even displays the icons in collapsed groups.The previews pop up quickly as you roll over the task bar and are a good size for viewing. go get it
So ultimately I settled on using two apps – TaskSwitchXP and Visual Task Tips. Together they give the me flexibility to flip through my open AutoCAD windows and get a good idea of which one is which. Along the way I found others that either didn’t work, or were too expensive for me. I should also mention that nothing worked if you have the AutoCAD TASKBAR Variable set to 1 (displays all drawings open in a single session as separate items on the taskbar).
If you know of any good tools out there that you’d like to share, drop me a note and I’ll give them a go. In the mean time, give some of these a try and let me know how it goes!
