Chapter 3 Tips - Palettes         

Palettes are a new concept to AutoCAD, introduced in 2004. On the Standard Toolbar are 3 Icons, Properties, DesignCenter and a new one Tools Palette.

In previous versions when you opened either of the first two as a default, they floated in the Drawing Area. Alternatively, you could dock them wherever you wanted them Fig B3-1

Palettes do the same but with the important addition of the blue strip down the left hand side. This adds the possibility to close the palette when you don’t need, thus maintaining the maximum Drawing Area or automatically hiding whenever you move the mouse away from it. Fig B3-2. These options are available via the Properties sub menu accesses via the icon at the very bottom of the blue bar.

The third Palette is the Tool Palette Fig B3-3 As you can see on the standard Tool Palette there are three tabs two are Hatches (see Chapter #) and the other holds a combination of Hatches and Blocks (see Chapter #)

Each of these tabs is regarded by AutoCAD as a Tool Palette within the Tool Palette Window. The Hatches and Blocks are the Tools, which can be dragged and dropped into a drawing. As such, it is not expected that anyone will use the Tool Palette Window as it is. They are designed to be customised by each user so that contain the items they would use most.

Creating a custom Tool Palette/tab will be discussed in Chapter 6 when we will also look at the AutoCAD DesignCenter.