Autodesk User Group International

Last month, I talked about building content from different resources to help establish a collection of tools that can be used to simplify the drawing process on projects. This article will focus on some of the ways to share and manage Tool Palettes. There is much that can be done with Tool Palettes to make things easier, but it doesn�t mean getting there won�t take a little bit of work.

Sharing Tool Palettes with Others
Sharing is something that we are taught at an early age with our toys, books, and many other things. Tool Palettes are no different�they can be shared with others by exporting and importing, from one machine to another. The initial process is very easy, but can take some additional steps in getting them to work on a different machine, based on drive mapping and path changes that might occur between machines. I am not going to tell you the process is always smooth, nor am I going to tell you to sit around and wait for a future release that would include a better set of tools to help manage Tool Palette content. If you adopt technology when it is new, you will be much farther down the path than those that sit and wait for it to be perfect.

Importing and Exporting Tool Palettes
A Tool Palette is exported and imported through the Customize dialog box. This is the same dialog box that is used for adding and modifying both Toolbars and Accelerator Keys. Below are the steps taken to export and then import a Tool Palette.

Type in the command CUSTOMIZE at the command line, pick it from the Tools menu or right-click on the caption area of the Tool Palette window, if it is visible and floating on screen.

The next steps are slightly different based on what version of AutoCAD you are running. In AutoCAD 2004 (without Tool Palette extensions), select the desired Tool Palette from the list and click the Export button. In AutoCAD 2004 (with Tool Palette extensions) and in AutoCAD 2005, right-click on the desired Tool Palette and select Export from the short-cut menu.

The Export Tool Palette dialog box will appear on screen. This dialog box allows you to specify the name and location of the Tool Palette that is being exported. Tip: Exporting a Tool Palette can be a great time saver when you are new to building Tool Palettes and when making a lot of changes. This allows for an easy way to quickly restore the Tool Palette content or if something needs to be brought back.
Once you have specified both a name and location for the exporting of the Tool Palette, click the Save button to write out all the content on the Tool Palette.

So what is exported to that location, you might ask. Well, it varies based on what is on the Tool Palette for content. For the most part, you will end up with an XTP (eXported Tool Palette) file and a new folder containing the images that were generated by the Tool Palette interface. You might not see all the images for tools in the folder due to the source location for the content. Some of the tools for which you will not see images might be those that were created from Toolbar buttons because they are referenced in a resource DLL that is stored in the AutoCAD program directory.

People are often confused by tools such as blocks and images. Since these tools use absolute paths in the tool, AutoCAD does not pull this information together when exporting a Tool Palette. This is why I mentioned earlier that Tool Palettes could be shared as long as drive path is the same between machines. I will talk more about how to get around the absolute path problem next month.

Importing a Tool Palette is pretty much the same as exporting a Tool Palette. Repeat steps 1 and 2, except in step 2 select Import instead of Export.
The Import Tool Palette dialog box will come up. Browse to the location in which the XTP file and its associated images are stored and select it.
Once the XTP file has been selected, click the open button and the Tool Palette will be added. This will not overwrite an existing Tool Palette, if one with the same name already exists.

Next Month
Next month we will dive into Tool Palette groups. I will also present an alternative to Palette groups that will work even if you are using AutoCAD 2004 without the Palette extension. Until then, happy paletting!

Submitted by Lee Ambrosius of HyperPics.

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