I was not too worried, having remembered that Matt Dillon had posted an article in his blog giving a method of creating such a shortcut without the need to go into the installation program. I opened up the program and after getting through the authorization process, opened up the Options dialog to begin making my usual changes to the out-of-the-box settings. While there, I noticed that a profile called "AutoCAD" had been created and found that profile was set up to run AutoCAD Architecture (ACD-A) "as AutoCAD".
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeVhw1sa_0AfHMiGIUmxx4Ij53zpSJdQjuTHJlhDQ2l8WFk5GizRIAuCmdDLfOdhgPrUHy1-LKEHmHNsHXQv0-mjI8ejDTkoQYN077WiZC-Yq3z9jN8_56wyB-cXmLJaBCwoOC2g/s320/01-Options-Profiles-AutoCAD.jpg)
Rather than creating a shortcut that calls a previously undefined profile, as Matt suggested for the 2007 release, I chose to make use of the AutoCAD profile that was already there. The following outlines what I did. The first step was to find the icon of the shortcut I would normally use to start ACD-A 2008, right click, copy and then paste a copy on the desktop.
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDonwSZ7gSkhiKSU9PxdffkHfGDDmWVnxfGCWwTxZd4xiASQZskvDsRm-74mTnpU56AWYE_MQz48rULLcb7fl1buQp2qQpeVPOnRm00RgGKeDP4o9e8vynPj67CZYuLq8YinRsxg/s320/02-Desktop-Copy-Shortcut.jpg)
I then right clicked on the copied shortcut and selected Properties from the context menu. On the Shortcut tab, in the Target edit box, after the "/p" switch, I changed the name of the profile to be used when launching ACD-A to "AutoCAD".
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhs-Z7QTGooKrU9bhCu7jk9S4Y8wxZQw59Z4gJQ-igvY2-RroII1-h3w4AFQJ02-6yxE0pEnaqio32HpgJDAgFJURC7Vt85b8-AE9fkq4A1lsYXRombKINJ2XQnnunrJkjy6nkzxQ/s320/03-Shortcut-Properties-Shortcut-Target-ProfileChange.jpg)
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4A2YTFOxJInktTVDBPcB_hABWSNmt1B3bZPfoPrxVU8ZgcjvCRDc65PtgRWeMc62jgaMjNqf8jxr66nw4zuMxkYrSGd2RiCXKzepKx2jZt-814NtBJis52EE-lgILJ6YdwytzOw/s320/04-Shortcut-Properties-Shortcut-Target-CommentChange.jpg)
I also wanted to give this shortcut a distinctive icon, one my aging eyes would have no trouble distinguishing, so I selected the Change Icon... button, which opened a "Change Icon" dialog showing the current icon as the only choice. A click on the Browse... button in that dialog opened another "Change Icon" dialog that would allow selecting a different source file for the icon, starting in the folder in which the current icon's source file was located.
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6ymV0GHsKuzl-TDoblXPKhyf3jdIkKWpGdPCpbmgoAhoCxlj_DVIqHQbSAu0Mmn4tMYk3fgCSH4ihx4gxrXMxI4vKEZhqZrCOqJ7lLTXUXZM4h8fpe9tQgZYPxxtspuDkgxQDaQ/s320/05-Shortcut-Properties-NewIcon.jpg)
The final step was to select the General tab and change the name of the shortcut, as seen below.
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfBbFe6ZtlPGEWAVU5ng05tNMOYe4H-wHRc-ipm9_f-HnwkXv-1dEwtT7Ev_stOolz3G9tFtU79zN7mzkm9Su0HwcWL8j3erUcGTGJyRzK38Efjll_P0Kh5pK-nAd5ly8ghpTgew/s320/06-Shortcut-Properties-General-Rename.jpg)
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh126Wc5hmPanGdqxUHr7uYVHKrFtTQFUW2Ia5C1xhC5ob4KFCfyAFV6FD5Ey_Am41J_gF5gEJmXLONwyjlQi4ZueI1UqxAJOFhV8ZrWObXTimo2R_bi5qN6X9ZtUZy-CENYEWtvA/s320/07-Dekstop-Shortcut-Final.jpg)