Palettes not staying put

[cbenner]

Feeling pretty brain dead and frustrated at this moment.  This is not my first rodeo when it comes to tool pelettes, but for some reason I cannot remember how to get a newly created palette to stay in place when Autocad (or AcadE) is closed and reopened.  I have exported the palette, saved the workspace, I have all the paths set up (previously created custom palettes are still in place).  Only thing that's new is the PC.... so there has to be some stupid check box or setting that I am mising.

Help?  I'm feeling anything but expert at the moment.

[dmfrazier]

"But any time I use "New Palette"... nothing."

"Something is preventing the new ATC file from being created..."

"This same behavior is true in both Autocad and Autocad Electrical..."

"Neither program will create a new ATC file."

These observations are strong indicators that a certain, specific functionality of AutoCAD is not working correctly, which would lead me to suspect an error occurred during installation or when you first launched AutoCAD using your Windows profile. 

In an earlier post I suggested that maybe this is one of those messed up Windows profile issues. Have you tried creating a new Windows user profile with admin rights and seeing if this happens when logged in as that user?

Also, have you tried anything along the lines of a repair and/or re-install?

[zalant]

You mentioned that you have two distinct paths which are not being updated when you create a new palette.  Are both of those paths on the same physical computer? Are they network paths? If so, try directing your tool palette settings to a local path on your own computer.  Then see what happens.

Also, are there other AutoCAD or Electrical users in your office who do not experience this same problem with new palette creation?

[cbenner]

Ok, Zac

Local folder seems to work.  Does this mean that we cannot have a shared palette location?  I would like for the two of us users to always be looking at the same palettes for symbols, and I am the only one who changes them.  Is this not possible?

[dtiemeyer]

Chris, I'm running into the exact same issue (yesterday and today, ironically). I've confirmed that if I open AMEP 2014 from an OOTB profile (which paths to C drive) and create new palettes via that profile, the ATC files get created. I can customize them within that profile, then close AMEP, move the ATC files into my network location, then open my customized profile that reads the network directory and the new palettes exists & function normally (be sure to copy any images too, or wait to manipulate images until you're working via the custom profile/network path).

I'd like my 5 hours of wasted time back, but at least I have a workaround now.

What's the problem here Autodesk? is this a bug that will be fixed?

[cbenner]

This is the same thing I've noticed as well.  It looks like in order to have a newtwork location as the palette home, you have to first set your path to a local folder, create the palette then copy it to your network location, and once again change the path.  Another instance of: "You can get there, but you can't get there from here."

[cbenner · Accepted solution]

This reared it's ugly head again today and I think I have finally nailed it down.  Thanks to Autodesk for making this so intuitive that it took a guy with nearly 20 years experience more than 6 months to figure it out.

Unless you plan to just leave well enough alone out of the box, and want to set up a shared location for tool palettes, you have to know where to point the program (be it Acad or AcadE or AcadM) to find the right information.  Based on the help section, one would think that the path needs to be set to the location of the .ATC files for the tool palettes.  This would be incorrect boys and girls.  My apologies to those of you who knew this all along... maybe I'm just slow.

The search path for tool palettes needs to point to a folder containing the file: AcTpCatalog.atc

UNDER this folder needs to be a folder that will contain the individual palette ATC files, and under that the folder for the image files.

My thanks to the people who pointed me to looking for what changed as I added and deleted palettes and workspaces.  Finally I looked to the brand new shiny install of AcadE 2015 sitting on my desktop to see where it was looking for palettes... then recreated the same structure on my shared drive.  Maybe I'm dancing my happy dance too soon, but so far it seems to be working out.

I am going to mark this as solved for future reference in case anyone else has this issue and wants to save themselves 6 months of banging thier head on a wall.