I Forgot to Add Express Tools to AutoCAD! Now What?

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One thing that can easily happen when installing any version or flavor of AutoCAD is to forget to install the Express Tools.

It's easy to miss them, but if they need to be added after installation, it's not hard at all.

Here's the steps to do it!

The first thing to do, is locate Add/Remove Programs in the Windows Control Panel.   Find AutoCAD, and right click on it.  Choosing Uninstall/Change. 

I'm using AutoCAD Mechanical 2014.  Keep in mind you may have a different version or flavor of AutoCAD!

Choose "Uninstall/Change" from the control panel

AutoCAD's installer will start.  Choose Add or Remove Features on the first screen that appears.

Choose "Add or Remove Features"

Click through the screens until a list of AutoCAD Features appears.  If Express tools has a red 'X' on it, check the box so it has a green arrow like in the image below.  Once Express Tools is selected, click Update.

Make sure to select Express Tools and choose update.

 AutoCAD will update.  Let it run, finishing when it completes.

Updating the feasture

 Once the update is complete close the installation dialogs and start AutoCAD.

If the Express Tools don't load, there may be one more step that has to be done.

Type CUILOAD at the AutoCAD command line.  Choose browse and locate the file acetmain.cuix.  The default location in Windows 7 is:

 C:\Users\<username
>\AppData\Roaming\Autodesk\AutoCAD Mechanical 2014\R19.1\enu\Support\acetmain.cuix. 

But bear in mind that the location can vary slightly with different versions of AutoCAD, and system configurations.

Click Open to close the first dialog box.

Choose , followed by Close to load the *.cuix file and then close to dismiss it.

Loading and closing the menu

After these steps are done, the Express tab should appear in your AutoCAD installation, and you're ready to go!

Ta Da!  There it is!

And for a video showing the above procedures, take a look below!





****************Edit 31-October-2014 HAPPY HALLOWEEN! ************************

Just yesterday, I used this very technique to add Express Tools to a users machine.  And while all the toolbars were added successfully, I received a "Unknown Command" warning when trying to execute one of the Express Tools functions.

Fortunately a quick Google search found the following result on the Autodesk Website

The steps I used was to type OPTIONS, and on the files tab, choose the Browse button.

 Browse to the path

Navigate to the following directory \Program Files\Autodesk\AutoCAD 20XX\Express, and choose the Add button to add the path to the support directory.

The path added in

Once I had done that, the Express tools were working just fine!