Rollover delay for docked toolbars

[MartynCowley3208]

I have the Layer Property Manager and Properties toolbars docked on the left edge of my screen, with the Ribbon vertically between them and the drawing display. I sometimes 'overshoot' when going for a command from the ribbon and the toolbars pop-up immediately so that I then have to move the cursor back into the drawing space and wait for the toolbar to collapse before I can pick the command (more carefully). Is there a way of setting a delay on the toolbars appearing?

[pendean]

Dock them on the other side where you are less likely to hover over them constantly.

[MartynCowley3208]

I've got Design Center on that side.

[Charles_Shade]

Where the heck do you draw?

Sounds like a good candidate for a second monitor.

[pendean]

Do you really/truly need them all docked and open all the time? I'd love to see a screenshot of your desktop.

[MartynCowley3208]

Design Center is actually on a second monitor.

Screenshot attached.

[pendean]

Set your palettes to autohide, then park them all on one side: you don't really need that info live ALL the time, so only unhide when you do.

[MartynCowley3208]

The Layer Manager and Properties pallettes are already set to Autohide - the problem is that they expand instantly as soon as the cursor touches them, and then take some time to collapse when the cursor is returned to the drawing area. I was hoping that there might be a setting to delay the expansion so that they only appear when the cursor has hovered over their titlebars for (say) two seconds - as do the extended Tooltips.

Most of my work involves inserting Blocks from existing drawings, so I have Design Center permanently open on my second monitor.

[Johneng]

Try this link. You will need to restart AutoCAD for these changes to take effect.

http://autodesk.blogs.com/between_the_lines/2007/05/autocad_tool_pa.html

or this link

http://www.jtbworld.com/PaletteAuto-hideSpeed.htm

[MartynCowley3208]

This looked like just what I wanted - but it doesn't seem to work in LT.

[Johneng]

Did you have Autocad closed when you saved the changes? Also did you use milliseconds for the values? 2000 = 2 seconds 800 = 8/10th of a second.

[katani]

John, I suppose you tried making these modifications yourself and they took effect? The blog article is from 2007, btw.

As for AutoCAD LT 2010, I am now operating on, modifying the profile file caused the palette title bar must now be clicked rather than hovered over with the mouse in ofder for the palette to roll out and the new timer setting has no effect on the palette's behaviour. I had made a backup copy of that file and just now have replaced the modified one with it and sadly the new behaviour persists. Using the software from JTB for adjusting the timer settings didn't work either. 

Also Jimmy suggests that only certain palettes are affected by that modification and the layer palette isn't on his list.

I attach a snippet of the modified profile file. The fromatting is what is automatically applied to the file after I save the modifications, close the file and start up AutoCAD after.

[MartynCowley3208]

Yes to both - LT2012 was closed, and I set the values in thousands.

I assume there is only one instance of the file? The one I have edited is:

C:\Users\martyn\AppData\Roaming\Autodesk\AutoCAD LT 2012 - English\R17\enu\Support\Profiles\FixedProfile.aws

with these values:

<Profile><StorageRoot><AcApData><PaletteRolloutDelay="5000"/><PaletteRollupDelay="1000" PaletteHoldopenDelay="2000"/><HideableDialogs>...

[Johneng · Accepted solution]

I don't know why but it looks like LT users need to modify the Profile.aws file NOT the FixedProfile.aws file. The Profile.aws file can be found in the Unnamed Profile folder. For example C:\Users\martyn\AppData\Roaming\Autodesk\AutoCAD LT 2012 - English\R17\enu\Support\Profiles\Unnamed Profile\Profile.aws.

Exit/Close out autocad completely open the Profile.aws file in notepad find <AcApData> then follow the directions as described in Shaan Hurley's blog post that I posted earlier or can be found here http://autodesk.blogs.com/between_the_lines/2007/05/autocad_tool_pa.html

I tested this using Autocad LT 2010 and it works on the Properties Palette, Tool Palette, Layer Palette, and the Design Center Palette.

Remember autocad needs to be completely closed out before you can make changes to the Profile.aws file. Other wise your changes will not stick. Also remember to back up your files before modifying them.

MartynCowley3208 and Katani if you still can not get this to work please post/attach your Profile.aws file and I will take a look at it.

[MartynCowley3208]

John - thank you very much, this has been driving me mad for ages.