Sharing Tool Palettes in AutoCAD 2017

[john.vellek]

Setting up tool palettes in AutoCAD 2017 for windows to share on a network.

[john.vellek · Accepted solution]

Sharing Tool Palettes in an office is a great way to share standards. Linetypes, hatch patterns, LISP routines, blocks, etc. can be placed on shared Tool Palettes. Locating them in a single location will make sure that everyone is using the exact same ones which can make drawing and documentation much easier.

Create one or more locations on the network to store the Tool Palettes. This location or share can be set to Read-only access for common users so that they are not able to manipulate or change the shared Tool Palettes. I suggest that the shared palettes be built and maintained by a limited team or even an individual for consistency, uniformity, and accountability.

I suggest that adding the Tool Palette locations to each user workstation after the default Tool Palette location. This will allow users to create or modify tool palettes on their workstations to suit their personal preferences without affecting others.

To ensure accessibility for all users, the paths must be mapped exactly the same on all workstations.

Once the Tool Palette storage locations are built, create the actual palettes using the network locations. Make sure that any blocks that are placed on the palettes are located in an accessible location that won’t vary over time or by user account. If the blocks are moved, then the palette will be rendered useless unless you manually go into each palette and remap the location of the source files. This can be really tedious.

Palette groups can exist on the network locations but do not get handed back to the clients automatically.  The actual group file for each palette is stored on each local user profile.

Things to Know:

• Avoid copying tool palette files (ATC) between different product releases. Tool Palettes can only be used in the product release in which they were created.
• If you import a customized Tool Palette, you must keep the image folder in the same location as the imported XTP file or the icons will not appear in the Tool Palette.

About Sharing Tool Palettes and Tool Palette Groups

About Creating Tool Palettes

To Work With Creating and Modifying Tool Palettes

Commands for Tool Palettes

[Anonymous]

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@john.vellek wrote:

Palette groups can exist on the network locations but do not get handed back to the clients automatically.  The actual group file for each palette is stored on each local user profile. 

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How do you force updated palettes back to client machines?  Right now users have to toggle between a user defined (or OOTB AutoCAD) palette then back to corporate palette to see changes.  That kinda throws a hitch in maintaining company standards seamlessly with users.

[john.vellek]

Hi @Anonymous,

I haven't actually experienced this issue. The only thing I noticed was that new items would drop to the bottom of a palette and of course, the groups would need updating from time-to-time.

As an alternative though, I have also built the Tool Palettes locally in a location that resided on each workstation. I then pushed the palettes to each users workstations using a script. In this manner,  I was able to include the groups as well.

Thanks for your input.

[Anonymous]

We've also tried pushing them to local machines, but that adds a whole new level of maintenance when you have 500 users and many of those in remote offices that must be managed via VPN.

Right now I'm running a startup script through an MNL that cycles through *_toolpalettepath settings, that seems to work sorta, I was just hoping for a magic bullet setting. 

[john.vellek]

Hi @Anonymous,

Yes, I only had about 100 users at a time so I can empathize with your situation. As of yet there is no magic bullet. 😞

I actually pushed mine out by attaching a couple of lines to login scripts.  That way I would push them out at designated times and I would be aware of failures more quickly.

I also followed up by email with instructions to users on how to do the process manually should they have an incorrect version.

[Anonymous]

Failing a magic bullet I guess we'll revert back to that.  Thanks for the info.

[Anonymous]

The following is what I used to allow grouping of tool palettes and on the fly swapping between them, rather than having dozens of tabs within one palette.  It also allowed multiple users to access the same set of palette's, and has been very stable across the last four or five releases.

 Set up with a macro which does the following>

^C^C    Cancels any current command that may be current.

ToolpalettesClose   -  Closes any currently opened tool palette

*_TOOLPALETTEPATH "S:/ACADBLKS/TOOL PALETTES/Civil/Bolts" Sets the NEW and custom current Tool palette. This can be anywhere in your system, and one <could> make an environemnt variable that set the top level drive/Directory.  In the example, we are using a mapped network drive, but it is also possible to use a network share using active directory.

ToolPalettes   - Opens then newly active palette. Any number of tabs may be in this palette.  It was deemed preferable to group the tabs that are related to one type of activity into one palette.

This macro is then assigned to a button by starting the CUI and creating a new partial custiomization file;  then creating a new toolbar or ribbon dropdown.  (I prefer toolbars) :  Note that a custom bitmap is an advantage here. 

 The full macro <could> look like the following

^C^CToolPalettesClose;*_TOOLPALETTEPATH "S:/ACADBLKS/TOOL PALETTES/Civil/Bolts";ToolPalettes

 The directory structure can look like whatever your needs dictate.

To allow for individual customization, I created a directory of each of the users  windows logins so that if they click  the last palette in the toolbar( Named “ Your Very Own Palette”), they had a way to get their customizations and only theirs, as it is stored in a directory the same as their logon:

The code to do this is as follows :

^C^CToolPalettesClose;*_TOOLPALETTEPATH (strcat "S:/ACADBLKS/TOOL PALETTES/User/" (getvar "loginname"));ToolPalettes

This allows users individualitiy while still having all customization files on the network.  For the small amount of users we have, I opted to manually create the directories, rather than have them automatically created if they didn’t exist.  That <should> be a simple task to auto-create the directory within the macro if it does not exist.

  Just one more Idea,  but this one has served us well.

[Anonymous]

I've done something similar with lisp allowing users to jump through the OOTB local tool palette, or the network dept. standard or their own local.  Got the idea from Matt Murphy at AU several years ago.