Creating an "ADT as AutoCAD" Shortcut

When you install ADT, you have the option of creating a second desktop shortcut that runs ADT as if it was "vanilla" AutoCAD. This is merely an option, however, and is not turned on by default, meaning that many people miss it. I've seen people spending a lot of time and effort trying to recreate it after the fact by monkeying around with profile settings, unloading CUI's, messing around with demand-loading, etc.

You don't have to do all that. It's really simple.

All you have to do is copy your existing ADT icon. Right-click on the new icon and select "Properties". Rename the icon to something else (like "ADT as AutoCAD") and change the item in quotes after the /p parameter in the "Target" edit box to some bogus value - indicating an AutoCAD profile that doesn't exist. I'd just call it "ADT as AutoCAD". So instead of reading something like:

"C:\Program Files\Autodesk Architectural Desktop 2007\acad.exe" /ld "C:\Program Files\Autodesk Architectural Desktop 2007\AecBase50.dbx" /p "Architectural Desktop - Imperial"

Your target will instead look like:

"C:\Program Files\Autodesk Architectural Desktop 2007\acad.exe" /ld "C:\Program Files\Autodesk Architectural Desktop 2007\AecBase50.dbx" /p "ADT as AutoCAD"

Believe it or not, that's it! Run your new shortcut and you'll get a big old scary error message that the profile can't be found, so it will be built with the default profile instead. Guess what the default profile is? (Hint - it ain't ADT).