Each application needs Icons, or graphics in any way. Unless you're not dealing with logos or pictures, you probably searched the web for free icon sets serving your different purposes.

Mostly you are offered png files in different resolutions for multiple purposes (transportation, navigation, etc.), sometimes svg files, too. Maybe you used the "Material Design Icons" by google.

In terms of arcplan you cannot use svg files. So you are using png files instead. But sometimes your icon needs to be red, or green, or blue, or ... So you start creating copies of the original and edit these in photoshop or similar apps. Some time later you realize that your picture document contains "billions" of icons and your maintenance / making it reusable efforts are gigantic.

So here is my approach:
Use icon fonts. There are many available for free. I use Font Awesome, but the material design icons are also available as a font.

The main benefits are:

• It is leightweight - only a couple of kB and you have more than 600 icons at hand
• It is vector based - resize it the way you need - it's always brilliant (no pixel trash).
• You can dynamically use it with the arcplan functions - make it bold, red, green, blue or whatever you like
• Your maintenance efforts are much smaller

So let's start implementing ...
Download your favourite icon font. In my example I have an extra folder in the "wwwroot" folder of your arcplan server. Let's call it "font". Paste the Font Awesome (fa) folder (without the version number) into it. So you should have something like this (German Windows Server 2012 system):

As you can see there are sevaral font types in the fonts folder of fa. That's because each browser needs a different type. See more details at: https://www.sitepoint.com/how-to-use-cross-browser-web-fonts-part-1/ ("The cross browser reality").

In order to make IIS work the way you want you need to make some modifications regarding mime types. See more details at: https://weblog.west-wind.com/posts/2016/jan/25/fontawesome-fonts-and-mime-types-in-iis-and-other-web-servers

Now you need to tell arcplan to load the css file. To achieve that you need to have an init apd file which get's started upon application start. Create a text object "[<Mytextobject>]"and paste the following formula into it:

function addCSS(href) {
    if ($("head link[href*='" + href + "']").length === 0) {
        $('

').appendTo("head");
    }
}
addCSS("/font/font-awesome/css/font-awesome.min.css");

Create then a button object (this button needs to be executed during application start) with the following formula:
STARTJS ( "eval" ; [<Mytextobject>] )

 Now install the TTF font type locally on your machine (each developer should do so).

 To properly use fa you can do the following:
 Create a single object. Make it the font type "fontawesome" in your formatting dialogue. Pick (select and copy to your clipboard) an icon (only the icon itself) at http://fontawesome.io/cheatsheet/ and paste it into your single object. Unfortunately I did not find a way to tell arcplan to use the unicode string instead. Maybe some other arcplan designer can help out?

 Now you see it in the arcplan designer. You can format it the way you like. Finally you can reference this object in any other formula. Here is my set of directional icons in my icon apd file:

In order to print these Icons you have to use the ghostscript printing method (see more in the arcplan administration console documentation). Further infos regarding how-to properly install the ghostscript driver can be found here: https://community.arcplan.com/forums/customerservicetipsandtricks/installing_the_ghostscript_printer_driver
 Remember to install fontawesome TTF on your server!

 You can pimp your application by creating your own font. If you have your own svg files (e.g. each file represents a division of your company) go to https://icomoon.io and create your own font. Please consider: the used svg files needs to be black/white. So multiple colors are not possible in this approach.

 Create a new "addCSS" line in your text object (mentioned above) and apply the same way to your newly created font.

In order to check your implementation use a device where no font is installed locally. Otherwise your broswser will load your locally stored fonts.

 I hope you like this "new" apprach, too. Enjoy.
 Cheers
 Axel

Update 2016-09-26: New (better) link regarding IIS and MIME types, Ghostscript Printer Link