Getting Tool Palettes Organised Part 1

Watched this very good AU presentation

AC4814: Managing Your Standards and Reusable Content with AutoCAD® Tool Palettes: Revealed!

Last week on setting up Company Tool Palettes so they work across numerous version of Autocad and Autocad LT from 2002 to 2012 which we happen to have running for various reasons.

I learnt a number of things

1. Hatch, Lines and Text dragged to the ToolPalette remember what layer they were on and create that layer if missing when dragged into a new drawing. Great for helping new staff to great content on the right layers without thinking about it.

2.To access the hidden system variables in Autocad you can add *_ to before the command if you know it.

3. You can use the hidden command “ToolPalettePath” to switch between numerous versions of ToolPalettes which is great.

4. To switch Tool Palettes you can record a new macro command or use a Diesel command (as Autocad LT does not use lsp) with a button on a toolbar to do it.

5. The Tool Palette searches in numerous locations for the block to insert,
a. The current drawing
b. The original file it was added from into the palette from.

c. The files under options for your search paths.

Armed with this new information and the following on Diesel Expressions from Tailoring Autocad here on displaying Diesel expression information in the commandline and in the forums here on concatenate Diesel strings. To help me get a string of the current file path and name in Autocad LT using $(EVAL, $(getvar,dwgprefix)$(getvar,dwgname))

I am on a mission to get my offices Tool Palettes and reuseable content more organised and structured.