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Creating Your Own AutoCAD Palette

September 2, 2009 by Edwin Prakoso 10 Comments
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Autodesk has introduced palette in AutoCAD since a long time ago. If Im not mistaken, since AutoCAD 2005. It is a very easy way to manage (and create) your reusable content. We will place every dynamic blocks weve created there in this step. Later, we will use palette to access the reusable contents when we draw.

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Understanding tool palettes

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The Best, the Rest, the Rare: 100 AutoCAD Tips You Should Know How to Convert AutoCAD Drawing Units from One to Another? Snipped from help file: Tool palettes are used to manage blocks, hatches, and other custom tools. How to: embed image to AutoCAD drawing How to: add custom pattern to AutoCAD How to speed Up AutoCAD: configuring AutoCAD (part 2) If you see the palettes that are included with AutoCAD installation, you will see a collection of AutoCAD blocks, hatches, and other tools. This is a great way to you who want to customize your own workspace without a lot of work. You can access your blocks quickly, without having to use insert tool, find where your blocks are. Its just a click away. You can also manage lines with different line type, line scale, etc dimension with different dimension styles, hatches with different scales, etc. Thats what I love about tool palettes: simple but powerful. Take a look at this example, I use 2 icons (image below) to manage same pattern, but different scale. We dont have to activate hatch, find the pattern type, or make adjustment to hatch scale. Simply 2 clicks: activate, and click on boundary.

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You can also use it for other AutoCAD tools like dimension, lines, etc.

Creating our own palettes

Make sure your tool palette is opened. Right click on tool palette title bar. You will see a list of palettes group on your context menu. Select architecture to activate that group. This will activate architecture group. By default, this sample group only have one palette in it. We will add more here. Right click again on title bar. Select Customize Palettes from context menu. You will see dialog box like below opened.

There are two column in this dialog box. The left column, consist all the palettes available. On the right column, we can see how we group our palettes. Architectural group still only have one palette. We will use it as our tool group. Right click on left column, then select new palette from context menu. Rename it to something like My Architectural Objects. Find Architectural group on the right column. Your new palette shouldve already been placed here. If its not, drag it and drop under Architectural group. Close this dialog box.

Adding more AutoCAD objects

Before adding objects to our palette, lets discuss about objects, blocks, and file locations. For AutoCAD objects like lines, dimension, hatches, you dont need to keep your file. But if you intend to insert blocks to your palettes, dont loose your file. Lets say it this way: That file is your library, and clicking a tool in tool palettes will load that block. So plan where you will put your file. If you want to put it on server, do it before you start placing tools to your palettes. Now we can pretend our previous file that has our wall, column, and door has been save at appropriate place. Open it. Lets create a new layer. Name it A-Centerlines. Use magenta as it color, and lineweight 0. For linetype use center.

On command line, type LTS then [enter]. Enter value 10 then [enter]. Set A-Centerlines as current layer, then draw a line in your drawing area. Size doesnt matter. Now, click and drag the line to our palette. By default, it will be named Line. Right click on that tool, select rename. Give it new name: Centerline.

If you want your the tool to look more informative, you can change the ugly line icon with an image (jpg, bmp, etc) Drag and drop all your blocks here.

These tools will be named after blocks. There you go. Easy right?

Testing the tools

If you have more tools and blocks, you can arrange your them further. You can create more palettes if you need to. After youve done, try to create a new file. 1. Check on your layer manager, make sure you only have layer 0 (by default). 2. Draw using Centerline tool weve just created. It will be created using A-Centerlines layer, with its properties! You dont even need to create a layer! Check your layer properties now. Tool palette can be very useful for maintaining your CAD standard. 3. Place all other blocks to your drawing. Very easy right? Next, we will discuss about AutoCAD template and cad standard. And finally using them all in our design. I would like to know your opinion about this tutorial series. If theres anything you would like to add, i wrote something wrong, yours doesnt work as expected anything feel free to write in comments form.

More readings
1. 3 ways to move AutoCAD objects to other layer 2. Maintaining Your CAD Standard 3. How to: export custom rendering materials 4. Creating Schedule from Your AutoCAD Drawing 5. Summary: The Magic of Defining Your Own Workflow

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Filed Under: AutoCAD Tutorial

Tagged With: tool palettes

About Edwin Prakoso I work as an Application Engineer in Jakarta, Indonesia. I have 4 years experience in construction industry before I decided to work for Autodesk reseller. I'm a Revit Architecture 2010 and AutoCAD 2013 certified professional. This CAD notes blog is my notes when working with CAD applications and I hope my experience can help you.

10 comments Leave a message...

Newest Community Thuan
a year ago

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Thnks Edwin it very nice for me. Thuan Nguyen

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Nic olas MA RIE

3 years ago

Hi, It's crystal clear. Thank you very much. Keep up with the good works. Regards Nicolas.
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Nic olas MA RIE

3 years ago

Hi, I have been creating numerous tools palette of blocks to the extent that I needed to delete the default ones. Are there any ways to get them back or to collapse some of the palette i.e nested palette. I am also looking for doing the same with layout tabs ... too much of them .. Thank you. The notes and tutorials here are amazing. Nicolas.
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E dwin P rak os o

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Nicolas MARIE 3 years ago

Nicolas, You can export the palettes before delete it, so you can restore it later. But if you already delete it, then you can't get it back. You can't create a nested palette, but you can manage them in a palette group. So you can quickly switch between palettes by right clicking above the palette title and select the group from the list. You can manage palettes and groups by right clicking above palette and select customize palettes... Is it close to what you are looking for? I hope it's clear enough.
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E dwin P rak os o

Mod

4 years ago

I have never found this issue before. I searched in Autodesk support page, there's no similar issue has been reported. The 'choppy' graphics and the CPU fan shows that your CPU works hard when you do that. You may need to wait a little bit longer. But I don't think this issue related to your computer specification, because you can run Inventor on your PC.

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fby rne

4 years ago

I also noticed that if I open the Customizr Userr Interface, I can drag and drop commands from there onto my tool palette with no problem.
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fby rne

4 years ago

Yes- I can drag objects to other positions and also drag the palette. I checked also that the palette is not locked. I noticed that the graphics near the pointer get'choppy' when it's near the palette when I'm trying to drag-also I can hear the processor fan work really hard! My installation is a stand-alone Inventor suite, Acad version D.215.0.0, Mechanical 2010 Version2. I'm running Windows XP with SP3 installed.
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E dwin P rak os o

Mod

4 years ago

Or probably you lock the palettes by accident?

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E dwin P rak os o

Mod

4 years ago

Can you drag your objects to another position? Dragging objects can be tricky if you are not used to it. I'll try to find if there's any issue related to this. Which version are you using?
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fby rne

4 years ago

Good tutorial- but I cannot drag and drop onto palette. I found that only copying and pasting works... why is this?
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