Keeping Tools on Hand with Tool Palettes Window

One item that has been fairly conspicuous in the AutoCAD window is the Tool Palettes window. The main purpose of the Tool Palettes window is to give you easy access to symbols and patterns that you use frequently. It works by giving you ready access to blocks, commands, and other features contained within drawings in your drawing library. In a default AutoCAD setup, the Palettes window offers 3D modeling tools and blocks from drawings in the Samples folder of the AutoCAD installation, but you can add your own tools and blocks just by dragging them to the palette.

The Tool Palettes window provides a simple way to keep a set of blocks ready at any time. At first glance, there is no obvious way to add your own tools to the palettes. Adding tools and palettes to the Tool Palettes window is actually fairly simple. The following exercise shows you how to do it.

First, create a new palette for your custom set of objects:

1. Click the Tool Palettes Window tool in the Standard toolbar to open the Tool Palettes window.

2. Right-click a blank spot in the Tool Palettes window, and choose New Palette from the shortcut menu. A new palette opens along with a text box.

3. Enter a name for your new palette. The new palette appears in the Tool Palettes window with a tab showing the name you just entered.

Now add your custom objects:

1. Open a file containing the block you want to add to the palette.

2. While no command is active, click the block to select it.

3. Click and hold the left mouse button on any part of the block that is not a grip until you see the cursor change to show a small rectangle, as shown in the sample image in Figure 8.21.

4. Drag the block into the tool palette. The block appears in the tool palette.

Figure 8.21: Selecting and clicking a block

You can continue to add other blocks in this way. Once you add a block to your new palette, the block is available at any time while you are editing in AutoCAD. Just drag the block from the palette into your drawing.

You do not need the source drawing file open to access the blocks in the palette. AutoCAD remembers which file the block came from and copies the block whenever you drag a copy from the palette.

You aren't limited to blocks. You can also place hatch patterns in a palette. If you copy an object into the palette, such as a line or a text object, the command used to create the object is placed in the palette. For example, if you drag a text object into the palette, you'll see the Mtext command in the palette. If you drag a dimension into the palette, you'll see the dimension symbol that corresponds to the particular type of dimension that you dragged into the palette. For dimensions in particular, you can click the fly-out arrow to select a different type of dimension, as shown in Figure 8.22.

Figure 8.22: If a dimension is dragged into a palette, the dimension commands appear in the palette.

In this way, you can create a custom set of tools and symbols in one place in your AutoCAD workspace.

You can use DesignCenter to add drawing components from multiple files to a tool palette. Using DesignCenter, locate the drawing component you want, and then click and drag it into the tool palette.

Deleting Tools and Palettes

If you find you no longer need a block, a hatch pattern, or a command in the palette, right-click it, and choose Delete from the shortcut menu. To delete an entire palette, right-click a blank portion of the palette, and then choose Delete Palette from the shortcut menu. Click OK to confirm the deletion.

While deleting a palette, you might decide that you want keep one or two items. You can right-click the tool in a palette and choose Copy to copy the item to another palette. Right-click another palette, and choose Paste to paste the copied item to a different palette.

Customizing a Tool

Other shortcut menu options let you rename tools or palettes. You can also edit the properties of symbols in a palette. For example, you can use the shortcut menu options to change the default insertion scale of a block you've stored in a tool palette.

To do this, right-click a block in the tool palette, and then choose Properties to open the Tool Properties dialog box, as shown in Figure 8.23. Click the Scale listing, change its value to whatever scale you want for the block, and then click OK.

Figure 8.23: The Tool Properties dialog box

Once you've made this change, it's inserted at the new scale whenever you drag the block into your drawing from the palette.

Using this method, you can have multiple versions of a block tool at different scales. Make copies of the block tool using the right-click Copy option, and then rename the block tool in the palette. Change the scale of the copy (as described in the previous steps) using the right-click Properties option.

Once you've set up your block tools at different scales, you can drag and drop the tool appropriate to the scale of your drawing. And as you can see from the Tool Properties dialog box, you can modify other tool properties, such as color and layer assignments.

You can use this feature to set up sets of tools for drawings at different scales. For example, you can create a palette of architectural reference symbols for ¼" scale drawings, and you can create another palette for ⅛" scale drawings.

You can also use the Tool Properties dialog box shown in Figure 8.24 to modify solid fills or hatch patterns you've stored in a tool palette. For example, you can add several copies of a solid fill to a tool palette and then use the Tool Properties dialog box to set a different color for each solid fill.

Figure 8.24: The Customize dialog box

You can perform other types of maintenance operations on tool palettes using the Customize dialog box, which is shown in Figure 8.24. For example, you can change the order of the Tool Palettes window tabs, or you can group tabs into categories that can be turned on or off. To open the Customize dialog box, right-click Tool Palettes window, and choose Customize Palettes from the shortcut menu.

To change the order of the tabs, drag the tab names up or down in the left panel. If you select a palette in the left panel and right-click, you can rename, delete, import, or export a palette.

If you use the Export or Import options to move a palette from one computer to another, you must also import or export the drawings that are the source files for the palette tools.