Download Autocad Tool Palettes
Magdalena Liendo
In AutoCAD, tool palettes provide you with a combined method of accessing tools. Whether you prefer ribbons or toolbars, tool palettes provide the best of both worlds. Tool palettes can consist of commonly used blocks, hatch patterns, and commands. AutoCAD comes with many default tool palette categories that can be expanded or customized, allowing you to create one for your own needs. As with other palettes, you can dock the tool palettes or have them float within your workspace or even another monitor. Tool palettes can also be shared by exporting/importing to/by other users, and can be grouped like directories to provide you with even more flexibility and organization.
One type of tool palette is frequently used commands. Sure, there are many ways and locations to access commands: You can use the Command Window, ribbons, pull-down menus, the CUI dialog box, and more. However, creating a tool palette of commands allows you to store some of you most commonly used commands in one location. You can even create flyout commands that combine multiple commands from one location, and manipulate properties (and even images) associated with commands.
Hatch patterns can also be saved as a palette. Whether you need a predefined pattern or gradient hatch, simply select the hatch pattern you want and drag inside the area you wish to hatch. Again, you can modify properties for each pattern. For example, if you are hatching areas within a plan view and have multiple patterns and scales, you could run the hatch command and modify your settings each time you changed a pattern, adding many additional clicks to achieve what you need. With tool palettes, create the pattern once, save it as a palette, and then drag and drop to other areas. This cuts down on how many clicks of the mouse you have to make, making you more productive.
The most common use for tool palettes are blocks. Instead of searching through multiple directories or libraries, you can create palettes and palette groups for each set of blocks. The main advantage with tool palette blocks are the property options. For example, if a palette is created consisting of multiple types of pipe fittings, I can establish within the palette property to insert each fitting as a block or Xref. You can establish a set scale, prompt to rotate, explode, etc. These options are held within each block property option. However, the properties set in the tool palette do not affect the block itself. This allows you to customize blocks as you need to, but will not affect other users.
One of the many benefits of tool palettes is how easy they are to create and organize. When you have libraries of blocks that you have created, use the Design Center to create a tool palette in one step. As shown in the image below, simply go to the directory with your blocks, right-click, and choose create tool palette. As you get more familiar with creating tool palettes, they can also be customized and grouped, giving you even more flexibility.
For many of us who use AutoCAD, the main objective is to produce accurate, precise drawings and models as quickly and efficiently as possible, and tool palettes are a great way to do just that. Tool palettes give you a proverbial one-stop shop for commonly used features within AutoCAD. Learning the core functions is just the beginning. See the reference links below, to gain more knowledge and understanding on why tool palettes should be used within AutoCAD.
Want to learn more? Check out all the benefits of AutoCAD on our Features page; troubleshoot and get the details on previous software versions over on the Autodesk Knowledge Network; or take a look at all entries in our series, ExploringtheFeaturesandBenefitsofAutoCAD.
I created some tool palettes and have been trying to share them with my team. They tried importing the palettes by right-clicking import and using the .xtp files. However, the images of each block were not showing and they couldn't drag the blocks out of the tool palettes into the drawing. Then they imported the tool palettes by setting the file location of a shared network folder. Now they can see the images to identify each block, but they still can't drag the blocks from the tool palettes to the drawing. It's like the blocks in the tool palettes are empty. Does anyone have ideas on how to solve this?
Thank you for your reply, Valentin. I believe your first point may be the problem. Could you help me elaborating on how to check the source file and how to change that if that's the case? It seems to only work on my computer, and it doesn't work on anyone else's. I don't think it is about the version because everyone at the firm uses the same version.
Gabriella, see what Valentin mentioned - "Tool Palettes File Locations" in the Options > File (tab). I think you just need to make sure that everyone trying to use your Palettes has this configured the same way - in other words, using the same path to your source files. Once that is set up, I think you should be "good to go".
If anyone ever faces the same issue, the first suggestion of Valentin solved my problem. I checked how to proceed on identifying the file sources for each block using this procedure -.... I first checked the version and the folder path of the tool palettes, everything looked right. Thanks everyone for your help!
At my firm, we are trying to set up our standard block library with a custom tool palette. The .dwg and .atc files are in a shared location on our OneDrive server, but it seems like AutoCAD uses absolute file paths to locate these libraries. This doesn't work for us, because our OneDrive server is located at C:\User\USERNAME, etc...
The tool palette works perfectly from my computer, but if a colleague tries to use it, the block files are "not found" and they have to re-reference the file path from their computer. That overwrites the .atc file, and then the tool palette doesn't work on my computer, and so on.
@Anonymous It sounds to me like you have created tool palettes by dragging and dropping blocks onto tool palettes to create custom insertion tools. This is an easy way to share content among your colleagues, however it requires that you either copy your tool palettes and send the files (including the blocks) to the other users, or you set them up on a network location and map everyone to point to this location. I have done that in the past and like it, but I am not certain that you can do this on OneDrive - maybe you can if OneDrive can be mapped to in AutoCAD's Support Files Search Path and the tool palettes can be mapped to as well in the Tool palettes file locations - both are found under the left "Files" tab in your AutoCAD Options.
If you can create a network like drive letter for OneDrive, you should be able to put your blocks up on that drive in a folder and then create new tool palettes (or edit your old tool palette block paths) which will use the new Onedrive Network location. Once redefined and stored, you can export each tool palette and your users can import them, or you can just save the whole custom tool palette folder to a OneDrive folder and users can place it on their hard drives and make sure their AutoCAD tool palettes file location folder maps to this folder.
So you have two ways to go: 1. If possible, post files on OneDrive and rebuild palettes to source from there then send users the exported tool palette definitions, or 2. if that will not work, zip up and send users your local files from your own HDD and also export the palette definitions and send those to your colleagues so they can place the zipped up block files in the same location on their HDD, and then import your tool palette definitions.
Thank you, this is really helpful. You are correct, I did drag and drop .dwgs containing our block files to build this palette, with the intention that they will automatically update the palettes for all of our users if any changes are implemented. I built the palette from a shared folder location and remapped the Tool Palettes search path to this folder.
The system is partly working now. A few notes for anyone else who stumbles across this thread in the future. I opened the .atc files in the shared location, and in some cases had to find and replace the C:\myname\ directory with %UserProfileFolder%\. In other .atc files, there was already a relative path in place.
This now works for everyone in the network, except for those who have their OneDrive installed on a separate directory, such a D:\. I can't figure out how to make the search path more generic, or if that is possible. Your suggestion of creating a new network drive letter for all of our OneDrives is, I assume, the correct solution. However, it is too disruptive for us to do right now.
Cheers,
Edwin Prakoso
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That's it. Now when you make a change, all the other users have to do is restart CAD and the changes will update when opening the new session of AutoCAD. If you need more info hit me back up in this thread.
We have setup done this way, but some tool palettes are not updating without deleting and importing. Also, when new tools are added, they are located on network computers to the bottom of the palette.
No you don't need to "try" it, you need to "do" it. If everyone has full permissions then if you make changes to the Tool Palettes the files are not written until you close the session of AutoCAD. This means, if another user has AutoCAD opened, and closed the program AFTER you have made the changes, they will overwrite the new additions you just made. That's why everyone else needs to be read only, so that you (assuming you are considered the CAD Manager) are the only one who is in control of the additions and/or changes to the Tool Palettes.
Now, on to the other problem. Autodesk for some reason isn't smart enough to have the Tool Palettes update the organization and group hierarchy. It only maintains this through an export/import. The data is still there, you'll just have to go to each workstation and make the necessary adjustments to get them visually all in sync. Bummer I know, we've been dealing with it for years but it's still better than export/import.