Greetings Forum,
I have been tasked with creating a standard set of details for our company and making them available to some 40 odd cad users across 3 offices. To this end I have been searching the internet and this website for a while for methods of sharing and I think I have found a solution that works, but it is not very user friendly or 'elegant' as programming people like to say.
I was hoping to get some comments and criticism or suggestions for improvements before I advise that this be implemented. This may also be a workaround solution to what appears to be a problem exporting tool palette groups and the aparent inability to import them with their file structure actually populated.
To start with, our civil 3d 2010 deployment is set up with two locations in the options->tool palette file locations field, a location on the C: drive (different from the default i see with the \enu\ location), and a shared network drive location, (call it R: ). The C: location is on top of the list and is read/writable, and the R: location is naturally write only.
I have tried several times to create a tool palette set on my computer (both based in the C: location and on the shared R: drive after un write protecting it) and exporting that tool palette structure to the shared R: drive and importing it on a test machine. The palette structure always imported fine, but the palettes themselves never actually populated the structure.
After a lot of trial and error and a near solution using ContentBrowser i think i have a rather crude way to import a structured tool palette and have it actually populate itself, thus avoiding the need to drag each palette into the correct place one by one.
The idea here being to set the palettes up on the local machine (C: ) as a testbed and because I havn't decided if/how i want to make this available on the shared R: drive.
Abbreviated example of what i am referring to: (consider *'s as tabs to delineat subfolders)
Folder: Standard Details
*Folder(tool palette group): Drainage
**Folder(tool palette): Channels and Ditches
***Blocks
**Folder(tool palette): Detention Basins
***Blocks
**And so on...
When I right click on the Tool Palettes name bar (to change palettes, or as if to go to customize) it shows up with the assortment of CAD standard palettes, the all palettes option, and Standard Details with an arrow next to it that then yeilds another menu that contains Drainage and the rest of the list. Selecting Drainage activates the Drainage palette group containing tool palettes (tabs) for Channels and Ditches, Detention Basins, and others, that house their respective blocks.
So to get there!
I have the Standard Details drawing file .dwg's saved on the shared R: drive broken out into the appropriate folder structure for ease of access and editing.
In Civil 3D 2010 I changed the options and read/write permissions so that it would save my palette changes to the shared R: drive palettes folder.
Then i created all of the palettes using Design Center and created/populated the Tool Palette structure i wanted. Closed C3D to save the changes.
Now i am in posession of a folder populated with multiple .atc files (IE: Channels and Ditches_gibberish id string.atc and Detention Basins_gibberish id string.atc)
Then I went through the customize menu, right clicked on the Standard Details top folder and seleted export. I saved the Standard Details.xpg one level up from where the .atc files are stored.
I read through the AcTpCatalog.atc file and isolated the entries pertaining to the Tool Palettes i just created and copied them all to a blank notepad.txt file for later use.
Then I switched to my test computer (cleared of all previous versions of the test information, reset to original options setup) to test the implementation, steps are as follows.
1. Copy Tool Palette .atc files (Channels and Ditches_gibberish id string.atc and friends) from shared R:....\palettes to the C:...\palettes equivalent.
2. Copy relavant images between same files
3. Copy Standard Details.xpg to analogous location, one level up from C:...\palettes
4. Copy previously isolated chunk of code from AcTpCatalog.atc (saved in a .txt file) into the local version of the AcTpCatalog.atc file (same location as the .xpg, one level up from C:...\palettes). For ease of location and management I have been pasting the aforementioned text into the .atc file just BEFORE the closeout string (I dont know this particular language so i cant be much more specific and I only figured this out by looking at the patterns in the code), the following is the last part of the last line of the file and where I insert the copied code.
Insert copied code before this point in the LAST LINE of AcTpCatalog.atc
......\/
(-=HERE=-)</Palettes><Packages/><Categories/><StockTools/><Catalogs/></Catalog>
Now we have edited the local AcTpCatalog.atc file to recognize the palette .atc files that we have just added to C:...\palettes, more importantly, all the files have synchronized references to the ID strings appended to the .atc files.
Now open C3D, enter the customize command. In the left side Palettes list there are now palettes for Channels and Ditches, Detention Basins, and the rest of the palettes.
Next right click on one of the folders on the right side Palette Groups list to access the import command. Navigate to the C: version of Standard Details.xpg and load that in.
If I am correct, and have written this up properly and it has been interpreted correctly the Standard Details palette group will appear AND be populated(!)
Please if you can follow this or if you have a few minutes to create a dummy setup and test it out or just have input, leave a comment. I have only 2 years of C3D experience and very limited formal training so this was put together from expirementation and trial and error.
Thank you for your time!
-Adam