The New Tool Palettes in AutoCAD 2004

By Ellen Finkelstein

Tool palettes provide a new way to add content to your drawings. In a nutshell, tool palettes give you the ability to insert drawings, hatches, and blocks by dragging an image from a tool palette into your drawing. AutoCAD® 2004 comes with three default tool palettes that you can use as a springboard to create your own. To open the tool palettes, on the Standard toolbar, click Tool Palettes, or press Ctrl+3.

Terminology

The terminology for tool palettes is a little confusing, so let’s start by getting it straight (see Figure 1).

• Tool Palettes window: The window that opens when you press Ctrl+3. By default, the window contains three tabs, and you can create others.
• Tool palette: One of the tabs in the Tool Palettes window. I often shorten this to “palette.” The tab includes the entire “page” of the palette, not just the edge that looks like a tab.
• Tool: Any icon on a tool palette (tab) that represents a drawing, block, or hatch.

Once you understand the difference between the Tool Palettes window, a tool palette, and a tool, you’re halfway there!

Purpose of Tool Palettes

What is a tool palette’s reason for existence? In other words, why would you want to use tool palettes to insert blocks, drawings, or hatches instead of some other method? Here are some scenarios:

• You use a digitizing tablet with oodles of blocks that you insert again and again. Instead, you can drag the blocks from a palette into your drawing with your mouse.
• You insert blocks at varying angles and scales and often need to adjust the settings. Instead, you can create a tool for each of the angles and scales that you use.
• You use the AutoCAD® DesignCenter™ feature to insert blocks or drawings. Instead, you can use a palette.
• You do a lot of specialized hatching and spend too much time adjusting the hatch settings. Instead, you can create a tool for each hatch setting you use and drag it into any enclosed object.

If you insert blocks and use hatches, tool palettes are for you. They are easy to set up and use and should save you time.

At the end of this article, I explain how you can use tool palettes to execute commands.

Creating a Tool Palette

Creating a new tool palette means adding a tab to the Tool Palettes window. You can create three types of tool palettes:

• Drawing: Inserts drawings as blocks
• Block: Inserts blocks
• Hatch: Inserts hatch patterns

The easiest way to create a new tool palette is by using the DesignCenter feature. You can automatically create both the palette and its contents from any folder. To create a new tool palette, follow these steps:

1. To open the DesignCenter, on the Standard toolbar click DesignCenter, or press Ctrl+2.
2. In the tree view or content area, navigate to a folder (to add all the drawings in the folder), drawing file (to add all the blocks in the drawing), block icon (to add the block), or hatch icon (to add all the hatches in the .pat file).
3. Right-click the item and choose Create Tool Palette.
4. If you select a folder, choose Create Tool Palette of Blocks. If you select a hatch file (a .pat file), choose Create Tool Palette of Hatch Patterns.

You can also create an empty tool palette. Right-click in the Tool Palettes window and choose New Tool Palette. On the label that displays, enter a name.

If you want to reorganize the tools on your tool palettes, you can move or copy a tool to another palette. Here’s how:

1. Click the palette (tab) that contains the tool you want to move or copy.

2. Right-click the tool you want to move or copy.

3. Choose Cut (to move it) or Copy (to copy it).

4. Click the palette (tab) on which you want to place the item.

5. Right-click any blank area on the palette and choose Paste.

Setting Tool Properties

Before you start using your new tools, you should set their properties. Tool properties specify how a drawing, block, or hatch is inserted. For example, you can specify that a hatch be inserted at a certain scale or on a certain layer. To set properties, right-click any tool and choose Properties. The Tool Properties dialog box displays (see Figure 2). This dialog box varies slightly depending on whether it is for a block, drawing, or hatch pattern.

To change a value in any of the sections, click the right column for that property. Enter a new value or choose from the drop-down list. Click OK to close the dialog box.

Configuring Tool Palettes

Good tool palette housekeeping keeps your workspace spick-and-span. Here are your options:

• Move a tool on a palette: Drag the tool and use the horizontal cursor as your guide.
• Move a palette (tab): Right-click the tab itself and choose Move Up or Move Down.
• Delete a tool palette: Right-click the palette and choose Delete Tool Palette. A message explains that you cannot recover the tool palette unless you first export it to a file.
• Delete a tool: Right-click the tool and choose Delete Tool. You need to confirm the deletion.
• Rename a tool palette: Right-click the palette and choose Rename Tool Palette. Enter a new name.
• Rename a tool: Right-click the tool and choose Rename. Enter a new name.

You can export a tool palette to a file to share with others or for backup purposes. To export a tool palette, follow these steps:

1. From the Tools menu choose Customize > Tool Palettes to display the Tool Palettes tab on the Customize dialog box (see Figure 3).
2. Click Export to open the Export Tool Palette dialog box.
3. Choose the location for the file and change the name if you want.
4. Click Save.

Exported tool palette files have an .xtp file name extension. You can also import a tool palette from this dialog box. Click Import, navigate to the .xtp file, and click Open. Notice that in this dialog box you can also create new tool palettes, rename them, delete them, and change their order. (This functionality is also available by right-clicking the tool palettes themselves, as described earlier.)

If you change a drawing, block, or hatch, its icon doesn’t change on the tool palette. In this case, you need to manually update the tool. Do one of the following:

• Right-click the tool and choose Properties. Click the Source File (or Pattern Name) item and use the Ellipsis button to choose any other file, block, or hatch pattern, and then immediately choose the correct item again.
• Delete the tool and reinsert it using the DesignCenter feature.

If you move the source file for a tool, you need to update the tool with the new location. Right-click the tool and choose Properties, and then use the Ellipsis button to select the file again.

Setting Tool Palette View Options

The Tool Palettes window has some great features that make it easy to work with. You have probably already discovered these, because some of them also apply to the Properties window. But in case you haven’t, you can

• Dock it: Right-click anywhere in the window and choose Allow Docking. This feature enables you to dock the Tool Palettes window on the left or right side of the AutoCAD drawing area. A docked window never covers up your drawing, but it does reduce the amount of space in the drawing area.
• Collapse it to the title bar: Right-click anywhere in the window and choose Auto-hide. This great feature collapses the Tool Palettes window to just its title bar when the cursor is off the window. Pass the cursor over the title bar to expand the window again. You can place the collapsed Tool Palette window outside the AutoCAD application window (if it is not maximized).
• Make it transparent: Right-click anywhere in the window and choose Transparency. This command opens the Transparency dialog box (see Figure 4). When the Tool Palettes window is transparent, you can see your drawing through it. You can specify the amount of transparency or turn it off.

Transparency is a complex topic. First, it is available only when hardware acceleration is off. Hardware acceleration speeds up your video display and is controlled by your computer’s video card. If you want to use the transparency feature, you can try software acceleration instead to see if it affects your display speed.

Follow these steps:

1. From the Tools menu, choose Options and click the System tab.
2. In the Current 3D Graphics Display section, click Properties.
3. In the Acceleration section, choose Software.
4. Click Apply & Close.
5. Click OK to close the Options dialog box.

Second, because the palette never covers the drawing when it’s docked, transparency is available only when the palette is not docked. The purpose of transparency is to let you see your drawing through the palette. Finally, transparency is not available if you are using the Microsoft® Windows NT® operating system.

You can set options that determine the size and layout of the tools on the palette. To do so, follow these steps:

1. Right-click any blank area on the palette (except the title bar).
2. Choose View Options to open the View Options dialog box (see Figure 5).

• Use the Image Size slider to set the size of the tools.
• Use the View Style options to choose whether you want tools to display only as an icon, as an icon with text, or as a list of icons with text to the right of each icon.
• Use the Apply To drop-down list to apply your choices to the current tool palette (the one that is displayed on top) or to all tool palettes.

Using a Tool Palette

After fiddling around to get the tool palettes to function properly and look right, you probably want to start using them. That part is easy.

To insert a block or drawing, just drag any block or drawing tool onto the drawing area. To insert a hatch, drag a hatch pattern tool into any enclosed shape. When you insert a block, drawing, or hatch, the tool's properties are automatically applied.

Creating a Command Tool Palette

An undocumented type of tool palette is the command tool palette. There is no support or interface for this type of tool palette, and the best way to start is to use an existing command tool palette and modify it. This is an advanced topic, and I’ll just briefly explain it here.

Tool palettes (tabs on the Tool Palettes window) are .atc files (although they become .xtp files when you export them). On my Windows® XP system, their default location is c:\ Documents and Settings\[username]\Application Data\Autodesk\AutoCAD 2004\R16.0\enu\Support\ToolPalette\Palettes. Whew! Because your system may be different, from the Tools menu choose Options, and click the Files tab. Double-click Tool Palettes File Locations to see the location on your system. (However, on my system, this displays only to the level of the ToolPalette folder.) There you see the .atc files for the three default tool palettes. You also have an Images folder that contains the images for the icons.

The .atc file is a text file that you can modify. It has many codes that I certainly can’t figure out, but for a command tool palette, the important parts are the tool name, image name, and the macro that executes the command (see Figure 6). Following is an example of a command tool palette that does one thing: execute the Line command.

Download (zip - 0Kb)

To create command tool palettes, you need to understand how to create menu macros, which are the commands formatted for menus. Menu macro format is not hard to understand, but it’s beyond the scope of this article.

Note that the icon images are in PNG format. An easy way to create an image for an existing commandis as follows:

1. From the Tools menu choose Customize > Toolbars.

2. Select the toolbar with the tool you want to use.

3. Click the tool you want to modify. The Customize dialog box displays, with that tool’s macro and image displayed on the Button Properties tab. (You can copy the macro from here too.)

4. To open the Button Editor, click Edit. If you want to change the image, you can do so here.

5. Click Save As and save the image as a BMP file (your only option).

6. To exit the Button Editor without saving any changes, click Close.

7. Use any image editor (Photo Editor, for example, which comes free with Windows) to save the file as a PNG file.

To create the tool palette, follow these steps:

1. Edit the .atc file to change the tool name, the image name, and the command macro itself to suit your needs. Save it under a new name.

2. Create a new tool palette by right-clicking and choosing New Tool Palette. Enter a name for the palette.

3. Open Windows Explorer and navigate to your .atc file.

4. Drag the .atc file to the palette. (You may need to adjust your Windows Explorer window so you can see both the file and the palette.) Here’s an example of a command palette with the Line and Circle commands. You’ll probably want to be more creative, since these commands are easily available from the Draw toolbar.

As you can see, when used in this way, a tool palette can be a substitute for a custom toolbar.

Conclusion

Tool palettes are a great way to get your work done more easily. They can replace a digitizing tablet, make hatching easier, and even replace toolbars. Try them out and you’ll probably find several uses for them.