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Hi Oddfries,
I'm attaching an image to clarify what you're looking for. Are you missing the Properties tool under the Home ribbon, Build tab, as shown?
If not, could you describe exactly what is missing? Maybe upload a screenshot to clarify?
Victoria Studley
Content Experience Designer - Fusion 360
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If I understand what you want correctly, the Object Color Contro is at the upper right of the Properties panel. The drop-down allows you to set the color of objects that are currently selected, or, if no objects are selected, set the default color for new objects. You can set the color to ByLayer, ByBlock, or any AutoCAD color. The first seven colors are listed*; select the Select Colors link at the bottom to open the Select Color dialog, where you can choose any AutoCAD color, including True Colors and Color Book colors.
You can also do all of this with the Color property on the Properties palette.
* - Once you select a color other than the first seven, that choice will also appear on the drop-down list for later reuse. Up to three previous colors will display.
You are using AutoCAD MEP? The original question involved the fact that the Home ribbon in AutoCAD Architecture does not have a Properties panel, which is also true of AutoCAD MEP. You mentioned having a Properties panel on the Home tab, so I assumed you were using "vanilla" AutoCAD and the screen shot was from AutoCAD Architecture being run as AutoCAD.
If a Properties panel was added to your Home ribbon tab as a customization of the out-of-the-box AMEP setup, then it may be different from the one in the ACAD.cuix file.
In AMEP, with no objects selected, you should still see Color as a property on the Design tab, under the General category, and should be able to set a default value for new objects. I almost always (99.9999% of the time) have this set to ByLayer. I rarely (if ever) assign a hard-coded color directly to an object, so that others using my drawings as an external reference and who choose to use color-dependent plot styles can control how things plot by changing the colors of the externally dependent layers. (New in the 2016 release, you can override hard-coded colors on objects in external references, but we are not using that release, yet.)
FWIW, the reason the Properties panel is not part of the Home ribbon tab in ACA and AMEP, is because the display of many components of AEC objects is set in the Display System, not directly on the parent object, so they made it harder to change things like color. If you select a Wall in ACA, the color property does not show in the Properties palette. That keeps users from setting a hard-coded color which may have limited effect, but it does make it difficult to fix things if someone sets the default for new objects to something other than ByLayer. (If you select an AEC object, right click and choose Edit Object Display from the context menu, and then go to the General Properties tab, you can change the color of the parent object. Most of the time I am doing this, it is to set improperly created objects to "ByLayer".
@craftsman-draftsman wrote:
Perhaps you might share your solution.................
If you are using AutoCAD Architecture or AutoCAD MEP, you could use the transfer tab of the Customize User Interface dialog (CUI command) to transfer the Properties panel from the ACAD.cuix file to the ACA.cuix or AMEP.cuix file, and then place that panel on a ribbon tab (new or existing).
Or, you could make your own; this blog post shows you how.
![Autodesk Design & Make Report](https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/1350519iCB55845EBFC43016/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999" "Autodesk Design & Make Report")
