DFTG 2419 Intermediate CAD
Student Guide
TOOL PALETTES
Concepts
• Tool palettes are tabbed areas within the Tool Palettes window (see Figure 1). Items
in a tool palette are called tools.
• A tool palette provides a way for you to readily access tools you need frequently.
• Any of the following methods opens or closes the Tool Palettes
window:
Command Prompt: Toolpalettes
Ribbon:
View → Palettes
Standard toolbar:
Pulldown menu:
•
•
•
Tools → Palettes → Tool Palettes
Select a palette by clicking on its tab in the Tool Palettes
window.
Activate a tool by clicking on the tool.
The Tool Palettes window contains many pre-defined tools;
you can also define your own palettes and populate them with
your own tools.
Figure 1. The Tool Palettes window
Creating a tool palette
• To create a new palette for your own tools, right-click in empty space on a palette and
choose New Palette from the shortcut menu. Type a name for your palette in the edit box.
• Add items to your tool palette by dragging and dropping them from your drawing or
from DesignCenter. You can add any of the following to a tool palette:
o Geometric objects such as lines, circles, and polylines
o Dimensions
o Blocks
o Hatches
o Solid fills
o Gradient fills
o Raster images
o External references (XREFs)
• To add text labels to a tool palette, right-click on your palette where you want the text to
appear and choose Add Text from the shortcut menu. Type the label text in the edit box.
• To add a separator, right-click on your palette where you want the separator to appear
and choose Add Separator from the shortcut menu.
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Student Guide
To edit properties for a tool, right-click on a tool in the palette and choose Properties.
o If the tool is a block, you can specify a Layer property. Blocks you insert from the
tool palette are inserted on this layer instead of the current layer.
o Blocks you insert from a tool palette have a property named Source File that is set
to the name of the drawing file where the block is defined. If you change the
block definition in the source file, you must remove all insertions of the block and
purge the block definition from the current drawing before you can successfully
re-import the block from the tool palette.
Exporting a tool palette
You can export a tool palette to save a copy of the palette in an external file.
• Right-click on a palette and choose Customize Palettes… from the shortcut menu.
• In the Customize dialog box, right-click on the palette name and choose Export… from
the shortcut menu (see Figure 2).
Figure 2. The Customize dialog box
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In the Export Palette dialog box (see Figure 3), choose a folder and specify a filename
for the palette file. AutoCAD supplies a .XTP file extension.
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Figure 3. The Export Palette dialog box
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