Last updated July 28, 2026
One file, around fifty commands. Dimensioning shortcuts, colour and linetype changes, zoom shortcuts, object snap toggles, block insertion, and a run of commands named simply 1 through 15. It is somebody’s entire personal shortcut set, saved as a single file and passed on.
The archive includes a README listing what each command does, grouped by job — dimensions, blocks, and so on. Read it first, because the command names are terse by design.
This will collide with almost everything
Of all the downloads on this site, this is the one to be most careful about loading, and the reason is arithmetic rather than any fault in the code.
Fifty commands, most of them one to three characters, is a very large claim on the namespace. Checked against the rest of this library alone, it takes at least five names that other downloads here also use:
- CT — also used by CHGTEXT and by Copy Change Text. Three different routines, one name.
- LE — also the line-then-text routine.
- BK — also the break-at-intersection routine.
- SL — also the set-layer-by-selection routine.
- AL — also the squiggly leader routine and the LLP Suite.
Whichever file loads last wins, silently. There is no warning, and the symptom is that a command you have used for years starts doing something else.
Then there are the numbered commands. Typing 1 through 15 as commands is legal, but it means a stray number typed at the command line runs a program instead of being rejected — which is a genuinely surprising way to modify a drawing by accident.
The file also defines two of its own commands twice over, so within the file itself the later definition wins and the earlier one is dead code.
How to use it anyway
None of that makes it worthless — it makes it something to harvest rather than install.
Open it in a text editor alongside the README, find the two or three commands you actually want, and copy those into a file of your own with names you have chosen. The individual routines are short and readable, and the dimensioning shortcuts in particular are the sort of thing worth having.
If you do want to load the whole thing, do it in a clean profile first and note what stops working. That is a real afternoon’s job, which is the point.
One period detail
The first line of the file writes a message into AutoCAD’s old screen menu area, announcing that the drafting tools are enabled. That menu strip disappeared from AutoCAD many releases ago, so on a current version this does nothing visible — it simply tells you the file was written when the screen menu was where you looked for feedback.
How to load it
Unzip Tools.zip, read README.TXT, then load TOOLS.LSP with APPLOAD if you have decided to take the whole set. Do not put it in the Startup Suite until you know what it displaces. Our AutoLISP guide covers loading.
Compatibility notes
No date in the file; the screen menu call places it firmly in the DOS or early Windows era. Written-for rather than tested-on. The individual commands mostly drive standard AutoCAD commands, which tends to survive.
Plain AutoLISP with no dialog boxes and no Express Tools calls, so nothing requires the full product; LT users on LT 2024 or later, the release that brought AutoLISP to LT, could try individual routines from it. See what runs on AutoCAD LT.
Download
| Name: | TOOLS |
| Description: | A single lisp file that contains numerous tools for drafting that include dimensioning tools, properties tools, text tools and others. |
| Type: | AutoCAD AutoLISP Routine |
| Author: | Anon |
| File Size: | 4 Kb |
| Cost: | Free |
| Worked on: | AutoCAD |
| Download File: | Tools.zip |
Related routines
- MBA collection — a similar personal set, packaged with toolbars instead.
- LLP Suite — 81 commands, with the same collision problem at greater scale.
- Best of LISP collection — a smaller set, documented file by file.