Can Tool Palette "Groups" be shared?

[bpayne]

I am currently creating the tool pallete content for our office. I have the tool pallete's on our server, but I can only get Autocad to recognize the tool pallete's themselves, and not the groupings that I have organized them in. Any help?

[mjfarrell]

Take a look here:

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet...linkID=2476059

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet...linkID=2475176

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet...linkID=2475323

[Mike.Perry]

Hi

Give the following threads a try, they contain a lot of useful information regarding Tool Palettes -

Registered Tools Folder Location

Can't Save Tool Palette

Export Tool Palettes

Using LISP routines in 2005 pallets

+

The following articles from AUGI HotNews might also prove to be useful -

Customization Corner - Leveraging Tool Palettes Part I - June 2004

Customization Corner - Leveraging Tool Palettes Part II - July 2004

Customization Corner - Leveraging Tool Palettes Part III - August 2004

Customization Corner - Leveraging Tool Palettes Part VI - September 2004

Customization Corner - Tool Palette Odds & Ends - October 2004

Have a good one, Mike

[bpayne]

Customization Corner - Leveraging Tool Palettes Part III is available, but the article doesn't cover Pallete groups till next month. The other links provided dont exactly cover how to save pallete groups over a company network. Any ideas?

[bpayne]

OOPS...found the answer on the second link in the first reply...thanks!

[Scott D Davis]

Is there a way to have Shared tool palettes automatically update on machines? We want to create an office standard tool palette, with groups, stored on a network location.

The other machines in the office should be able to path to the standard palette and groups through Options, but it seems the only way to do it now is through import/export.

We would like everyone's machine to have the same palette and groups. If we need to make a change or add content to a palette, we should be able to change the network version, and then when the individual users start AutoCAD, the palettes that open are the updated versions. More along the lines of menu files.

Anyone know how to do this? Maybe a script from a Shortcut switch? ....acad.exe /b "Script.scr"

[mjfarrell]

Standardize the PROFILE that the desktop icon calls when
launching AutoCAD to a network location for the ARG file.

[bpayne]

Standardize the PROFILE that the desktop icon calls when
launching AutoCAD to a network location for the ARG file.

Two problems....First, nobody could customize their profile (it's unlikely this would fly with the 100+ users). Second, I think you would still need to reorganize the palletes within the new groups if for example the profile was updated to include a new group.

[mjfarrell]

Problem two really isn't a hurdle, as most network
deployments are a planned event, and as such
the new profile would be put in place at either the start
or end of a work-cycle.

True, users would lose their menu customizations
that were generic to their work station and would
need to be updated after a new standardized ARG file
was distrubited. I do not see many ways to overcome
this limitation of AutoCAD and the menu structure.

Another option might be to ADD a header of sorts
within each of the publicly shared user profiles, then the
company standard portion could be modified en mass
as they are text files to add, remove, or modify that
portion that is changing. In short they would need to
share their profile so the administrator could apply the new
menu items within the ARG file.

[jpaulsen]

I have not implemented this yet but I did experiment with it on 2004.

I created a company tool palette folder on our network. The folder is read only.

I created a tool palette folder on my user drive. This folder has modify permissions. The user drive is a network drive that you may not have. You could create a tool palette folder on your local drive or any network drive were the users will have modify permissions.

You can specify more than one path for tool palettes. (Wish I could do that for CTBs) I modified the tool palette path to point to the network folder referenced above and to a user specific network folder.

Since the company tool palette is read-only, when the user adds a new tab to the palette it is saved in the user specific folder.