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MBA Collection: A Personal AutoCAD Toolset with Toolbars

September 19, 2020

Last updated July 28, 2026

Somebody’s working toolset, packaged properly. Nine AutoLISP files, a menu, and 125 button icons, arranged into five toolbars: Navigator, My Bonus, Misc, Image and MyMultilines.

What makes it worth a look is not the routines so much as the packaging. Most personal collections in this library arrive as a folder of files and a list of command names to memorise. This one arrives as buttons you can see, which is a different proposition entirely — you can find a tool by looking at it rather than by remembering a two-letter abbreviation.

The toolbars are the dated part

The included instructions are clear and short: put the files on your support path, load any LISP files, then use the MENULOAD command to load the menu, and five toolbars appear.

That was the procedure for the MNU menu format, which AutoCAD replaced with CUI some releases ago. MENULOAD still exists but the old format is long superseded, so expect the toolbar half of this package to need work — or not to load at all.

The nine LISP files are unaffected by any of that. They load with APPLOAD like anything else, and their commands work whether or not a button ever appears. If the menu gives you trouble, load the routines and build your own tool palette from them — which is the modern equivalent, and better anyway, since a palette can be shared across a whole office.

The 125 bitmaps are the button faces. They are ordinary image files, so they can be reused on whatever you build instead — there is no need to redraw icons that already exist.

What the toolbar names tell you

The five groupings are a fair summary of what any working drafter accumulates. Navigator for view and zoom controls. Misc for the odds and ends. Image for raster handling, which dates the collection to when inserting scanned drawings was a common job. MyMultilines for multiline work, which suggests somebody who used that feature seriously.

And My Bonus — that name is a giveaway. Bonus Tools was what Autodesk called the extras that later became Express Tools, so this is the author’s own additions to that set, or his replacements for the bits he wanted differently. You can see the same instinct in the Bonus Tools package elsewhere on this site.

Expect name collisions

A personal toolset means personally-chosen command names, and those tend to be short. With nine files going in at once, check what you already have before loading the lot — the TOOLS collection and the LLP Suite on this site both claim large numbers of short names, and any two of these three together will overlap somewhere.

The advantage of nine separate files is that you can load them one at a time and stop when you find one you do not want.

How to load it

Unzip MBA.zip into a folder on the support file search path and read the included instructions first — the file is named so it sorts to the top of the folder, which tells you the author meant it to be read. Load the LISP files individually with APPLOAD. Approach the menu separately, and take a copy of your current menu configuration before experimenting with MENULOAD. Our AutoLISP guide covers loading and the search path.

Compatibility notes

No dates in the package; the MNU format and the raster-image toolbar place it in the late 1990s or early 2000s. Written-for rather than tested-on, and the menu half in particular should be treated as historical.

The LISP files are plain AutoLISP as far as the packaging shows, so LT users on LT 2024 or later, the release that brought AutoLISP to LT, could try the routines individually — though the toolbars will not help them. See what runs on AutoCAD LT.

Download

Name: MBA Lisp Collection
Description: A Series of commonly use lisp routines placed into a neat and tidy toolbar package.
Type: AutoCAD AutoLISP Routine
Author: See files
File Size: 68 Kb
Cost: Free
Worked on: AutoCAD
Download File: MBA.zip

Related routines

  • LLP Suite — the same idea at much greater scale, 81 commands with toolbars.
  • TOOLS — a personal shortcut set in one file, no toolbars.
  • CAD Tools — Autodesk’s own Bonus Tools, which the My Bonus toolbar name nods to.

References

  • AutoLISP: the complete guide
  • Free LISP routines library
  • AutoLISP on AutoCAD LT

Filed Under: AutoLISP Routines

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