When creating drawings in CAD, drawing standards play a significant role in preserving the output’s uniformity, workmanship, and quality regardless of who among the team members made the drawings. One of the best ways to deploy drawing standards is by exporting and importing tool palettes. But what if you are working from home and want the tool palette from your office? Is it possible to import the tool palettes and make them work on your computer? Fortunately, that’s possible. This tutorial will teach you how.
The essence of importing a tool palette into your CAD software is to have somebody else’s tool palette (all the objects and their embedded functionalities) into your workstation and use it immediately without going over the trouble of recreating it. Exporting a tool palette benefits a team leader or CAD manager who wants to deploy standard drawings to internal or external team members simultaneously. On the other hand, importing benefits end-users who wish for a tool palette but do not want or do not have the time to create one for themselves.
This post is part of a series of tutorials that provide practical tips to architects and CAD users while serving as a support document for some of our products. In this case, the tool palettes.
How to export a Tool Palette
Before you can export a tool palette, you need to create one. Read this post to learn how to create a custom tool palette. Once you’re done, export your tool palette by following these steps:
- On any drawing, press CTRL+3 to reveal the Tool Palettes tab.
- Right-click on a blank space inside a tool palette, or at the outermost left tab (when the tool palette tab is floating), then select “Customize Palettes…” (alternatively, you can enter “customize” in the command line instead of right-clicking on a tool palette).
- From the Customize pop-up menu, select the tool palette you want to export, right-click, then select “Export.”
- Choose a location for your tool palette. In my case, I put it on CAD Library/Tool Palettes. The tool palette you exported will have .xtp or .xml extension. The former is for AutoCAD®, and the latter is for ZWCAD®.
Your tool palettes are ready to use once an in-office team member imports them into their computer and as long as the source files are in the same network or path. It will not be as straightforward when you want to share the tool palette with external team members because you must ensure that you provide access to the network where you located the source files or send the source files to them directly. Otherwise, the blocks inside the tool palette will not work.
When you purchase a tool palette in our store, you do not have to worry about it not working because it has everything you need to make them work as we intended – the tool palette file (.xtp or .xml), blocks (.dwg), plot style (.ctb), a FREE pro forma CAD library folder, and the filing guide (.pdf). The CAD library folder contains preset structured subfolders where you can put the tool palette, blocks, and all other CAD assets you have. On the other hand, the filing guide contains the list of every block included in the tool palette product, the file name, the name of the block in the tool palette, and the directory where you will store each file.
Upon purchasing, you will receive the download link of the files. Download the files and then extract them to the designated location specified in the filing guide. Once you’re done, follow the succeeding steps to make the tool palette work.
In a nutshell, you need to do these three things to make somebody else’s tool palette work on your computer:
- Import the tool palette file.
- Change the path of the source file of each block in the palette, and
- Export the tool palette to preserve the path of the source files.
For this example, let me refer to the files in the Tool Palette + Dynamic Blocks for AutoCAD® (Plans, Elevations, and Sections) product. Follow the instructions herein, and the tool palette should be ready.
How to import a Tool Palette
- On any drawing, press CTRL+3 to reveal the Tool Palettes tab.
- Right-click on a blank space inside a tool palette, or at the outermost left tab (when the tool palette tab is floating), then select “Customize Palettes…” (alternatively, you can enter “customize” in the command line instead of right-clicking on a tool palette).
- From the Customize pop-up menu, right-click on a blank space inside the Palettes section, then select “Import.”
- Locate the tool palette you want to import. For this example, import the Doors.xtp file from your computer (it should be at CAD Library/Tool Palettes when you follow the filing directory), then click “Open.”
At this point, you should see the Doors tool palette added to the Tool Palette tab. But the blocks inside will not work until you change the path of the source file, which you will do in the following steps.
How to change the path of the source file in the Tool Palette
- Hover your pointing device on any tool, for this instance, the Barn_Double Leaf, press the right button, then select “Properties…”
- In the Insert section of the Tool Properties pop-up menu, click the small rectangle at the extreme right of the “Source File” to change the path.
- Locate the source file (Barn_Double.dwg). It should be on CAD Library/Blocks/Architectural/Doors/Plan/Barn. Click “Open,” then click “OK.”
At this point, the tool should be working when you click or drag the block onto your drawing. Move on to the next tools (Barn_Single, Bi-fold 2-Panel, etc.). Repeat the steps until you set the correct source file on all of them. I know it’s tiring to locate the files individually, but you’ll only do this once, so be patient. The filing guide included in the tool palette product will assist you in locating the files. When you’re done, you need to export the tool palette and overwrite the one in your CAD library to preserve the path of the source files. So when you need to re-install your CAD software and subsequently re-import the tool palette, you no longer have to change the path of the blocks again.
That’s all there is to it. The next time you need to share a tool palette with an external team member, you now know what to do. Check out our store for CAD assets that will take your productivity to the next level. Glad to be of help, Architect.