Managing your AutoCAD User Interface - Toolpalette Swapping

Following on from my previous posts, regarding the setting up and management of your Enterprise CUI and Toolpalettes, the following summary is how I go about managing the Toolpalettes, providing users with the ability to load any required Toolpalette set.

As mentioned previously the Toolpalettes provide the user with the facility to group the Toolpalettes, however this does not help us at an enterprise level, as Toolpalette grouping is saved in the users local profile. So What I do is setup the Toolpalettes independently, what I mean by this is, not setup toolpalettes or grouping, integrated with the workspaces, but rather provide users with an additional toolbar which facilitates the swapping of Toolpalette sets.

The Toolpalette Swap Toolbar

Providing users with a simple Toolbar for Toolpalette swapping means that I can setup my AutoCAD User Interface completely, as one environment, I do not have to consider different discipline or department groups. I can locate all my general toolset/customization in the CUI, Toolbars, Menus etc. and locate any group or discipline specific tools on specific Toolpalettes, thus allowing my users access to the whole toolset where they can choose which Toolpalettes they need to load.

In addition, I can choose to group my Toolpalettes, by loading more than one Toolpalette set at a click of one button on the Toolpalette Swap Toolbar.

Example

As before, the easiest way to show how it's all done is to run through the process of creating the Toolbar, so here goes...

Creating your Toolpalette Swap Toolbar

I am going to assume that we already now have an Enterprise CUI (see previous post), and this CUI has been loaded as a partial CUI for editing. We will create our new Toolbar in this CUI.

1. Start AutoCAD, and open your CUI dialog.
2. In the CUI dialog, on the "Customize" tab, select your CUI file from the drop down list (mine is called "my_enterprise_cui")...
   
    
    
3. Right-click on the "Toolbars" node and select "New Toolbar"
   
      
   
   A new Toolbar will be created, type in a suitable name for the Toolbar (mine is called "Toolpalette_Swap").
4. We now need to create the commands for our new Toolbar.
   In the lower left "Commands List" pane, select the "Create a new command" button, see below...
   
   
   
   You will now see that a new command has been created called "Command1" in your CUI file...
   
   
   
   Rename the command, I am going to setup 3 Toolpalette Swap command buttons, so I will name them accordingly
5. We then need to define the macro that will be run when the button is clicked...
   What we are going to do here is write a single line script to set the path to the Toolpalette that we want to load.
   Here is the script...
   
   ^C^CToolPalettesClose;*_toolpalettepath;"S:/!_ToolPalettes/ToolPalette1";ToolPalettes
   
   Explanation...
   
   ^C^C - cancels out of any currently running commands
   ToolPalettesClose; - Closes the current Toolpalette (; the semi-colon acts as a carriage return)
   *_toolpalettepath; - Command to define the path to the Toolpalette
   "S:/!_ToolPalettes/ToolPalette1"; - The path to the Toolpalette we want to display
   ToolPalettes  - Command to toggle the Toolpalette back on (Important Note: there is a single space immediately after the last "s ")
   
   
6. Now that we have our command defined, we can drag it onto our empty Toolbar.
   You do this by Left-click and hold on the new command in the Command List (lower left pane) and drag and drop onto the empty Toolbar (upper left pane). You can then select a predefined icon for use on the button or define your own. For this exercise I have selected the default Toolpalette icon.
   
   
   
   Repeat the above process to create the commands and buttons required.
7. When you have finished, click the "OK" button in the CUI dialog and your new Toolbar should be visible.
   
   
8. But wait a minute... now that we have commands to display our 3 new Toolpalettes, how do we get back to the standard AutoCAD Toolpalette...
   Using the above procedure, create another command button, with the following piece of LISP code as the Macro entry
   
   ^C^C(command "ToolPalettesClose" "*_toolpalettepath" (strcat (getvar "ROAMABLEROOTPREFIX") "Support/ToolPalette") "ToolPalettes")
   
   This will return you to the default AutoCAD Toolpalette set.
   The "ROAMABLEROOTPREFIX" variable provides the path to each users local AutoCAD support folder under their respective windows user profile.

So that complete's the postings, detailing how I manage an Enterprise CUI, and Enterprise Toolpalettes.

Comments

[Andy hudson]

Great idea, i'm started switching my companies blocks to tool palettes so this will help with sorting them.

But how do you keep the view options set?

i set them to display the blocks as icons with text, and set the size 1 down from the default size, but when i switch palettes they always revert back to the original size.

[Michael Cipolla]

John,

This is a great idea. I run a macro that copies all my content out to my users when they log onto the network in the morning. We have many laptops and this was the best way we could find to work it when off the network. I have setup the Tool Palettes in a simpler way so you. With a swapping toolbar. I was wondering if you have found a way to control the icons display sizes?

Later
Mike

[John Benstead]

Thanks for the comments, unfortunately the settings for the Toolpalette View Options are saved in the locally stored user profile. Which result in the Toolpalettes returning to the default display settings using this method of Toolpalette Swapping.
You can't have everything I suppose.
Another option that may be worth exploring, particularly if you do not have a large number of Toolpalettes, is to load all your Toolpalettes together, and use the TPNAVIGATE command (2008 only) to switch between the Toolpalettes. At least this way any display settings can be saved with the users profile. The downside is that the display settings are saved in the local user profile, so can't be managed on an enterprise basis.

[Stephanie]

Can TP group definitions also be shared in a similar manner? I can't seem to find anything on where the groups are defined.

[John Benstead]

Hi Stephanie

Yes, the method with which Toolpalette grouping is defined is certainly not documented anywhere that I could find, but after a bit of investigation I found that the Toolpalette grouping is saved in the user’s local profile.

This does not help us if we want to share this grouping at an enterprise level and that is primarily why I use the facility of Toolpalette swapping as described in my previous postings.

Sharing Toolpalette groups is one to add to the wish-list for the next release of AutoCAD.

[Chris]

I set up a ToolPalette swap toolbar as you describe and it worked great. Then I tried to change the drive letter (e.g. S:!_) to a path (e.g. \\xxxxx\toolpalettes) and it didn't work very well to say the least.
With our servers changing on occasion and users being able to assign different drive letters I was hoping you might have a suggestion on how to make a path work instead of a drive letter.

[John Benstead]

Hi Chris

Thanks for the comments.
I have received a number of emails regarding the possibility of using UNC path’s in the AutoCAD support file structure.
UNC path’s were not supported in earlier releases of AutoCAD, and because of this, and the flexibility of mapped drives, I had not tested to see whether UNC path’s work with the latest release of AutoCAD, until recently.
Unfortunately, after testing this, it is still not possible to get a UNC path recognized for a Toolpalette location or any defined support path within the AutoCAD options.
So it appears that we’ll have to stick with mapped drives.

[David Linford]

This is fantastic. Probably going to do this across 10 offices, 4 states, 200 users.

[John Benstead]

Hi David

Thanks for the comments. I have used this method of working with the Toolpalettes extensively for sharing company wide standard content. It is good to hear that others are finding these articles and methods useful. please let me know how you get on.

Best regards
John Benstead

[Randy]

I have a long delay when switching between tabs in my TP. Initially my custom palettes were on our server so I decided to path them locally to my C drive but I still have this lengthy delay of up to a minute or two in some cases. Not sure what the issue is here but it is annoying. Any ideas?

[John Benstead]

Slow performance of the toolpalettes (and other interface items) is a documented issue, generally I have found adjusting the graphics hardware acceleration settings has fixed these problems.
Have a look at...
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps/item?siteID=123112&id=11775817&linkID=9240617

As well as a solution on the discussion groups...
http://discussion.autodesk.com/forums/message.jspa?messageID=6052043

Let me know how you get on
Best regards
John Benstead