Subtitles of the Movie

OK, now we're in Part 2 of the Introduction of the AutoCAD Dynamics Blocks and Tool Palettes course. What we're going to have a quick look at now is what exactly is a Tool Palette? A lot of people don't use Tool Palettes, however, a lot of Tool Palettes are provided in AutoCAD by Autodesk already. A lot of people just close the Tool Palette and don't think to use it. So let's have a quick look at an example of a Tool Palette as well before we start the course in earnest and show you how to utilize your Dynamic Blocks and your Tool Palettes. Now what I've done here, I've gone to the View tab here in the Ribbon in AutoCAD 2010. You can also do this in the View pull-down. I think it's the Window pull-down in previous versions of AutoCAD. So, in the Ribbon it's View; in older, Classic AutoCAD Workspaces it's going to be the Window pull-down menu. So, I'm using AutoCAD 2010, so it's the View tab there and what I'm going to is the Windows group here, the Windows Panel and I'm going here to this Icon. I'm going to tile vertically. Now what that does is it tiles my two drawings, so I've got Space Planner Blocks-IMPERIAL, Space Planner Blocks-METRIC and you can see the chair and the lamp there. That's what I want in each of them, so I click here, just pan and zoom so I can see both, click here, pan and zoom so that I can see both. Now, they are the same Blocks but with different sets of units, so METRIC I'm using millimeters. IMPERIAL I'm using inches. I'm going to go to the Home tab there and to do a quick sanity check I'm going to use the Distance Command here. So there it is there on the Ribbon in AutoCAD 2010, Distance, so I'm going to check in the IMPERIAL drawing, click, click, using my endpoint snaps. So the Distance there is 10.9677 inches. I'll just hit Escape there now to cancel that, hit Escape a couple of times. I'll go into the METRIC drawing now, click on the Distance there and just check, there look, the Distance is 431.8 millimeters in that particular case. So you can see that the unit measurements in each of the drawings are different. Now, Tool Palettes. Let's go back to the View tab there, or the Window pull-down, potentially. I think what you'll find is you go to the Tools pull-down in older versions of AutoCAD, but we're going to kick off now the Tool Palettes and it's on the Palettes Panel here in the View tab. So I click on Tool Palettes here and the Tool Palettes will appear on the screen. Now you'll see there's lots of tabs in the Tool Palette there and what I've done there I've got it docked automatically. I'm just going to drag that out, so I'll click and I'll drag so it's a floating palette instead, like that. Now, you'll notice the drawing fill in behind there as well. Now these are all tabs that have been provided by Autodesk, so you'll see there's all my Constraints there, my Parametric Constraints which are new features to AutoCAD 2010 for example. But to see the list that's provided, see they're all cluttered up at the bottom? If I click there, look, you'll see that list is all of the Tool Palettes that are given to you free by Autodesk and AutoCAD. So there is a reason to use this information. Look, if I go to Architectural, there's all my Architectural Blocks sitting on an Architectural tab in my Tool Palette. So, let's quickly create a new Tool Palette. I'm not going to go through this in any detail because obviously we do all this in the course, so I want a New Palette and I'm going to call it Test. So, there's my Test Palette there and this is so easy now. I'm in my IMPERIAL drawing here; let's make that Current, and I click on the Block and I click and I drag and I drop that chair onto my Tool Palette. There's my chair. That's how quick and easy it is. I'll do the same with the lamp: click, click and drag and there's my lamp. Now, they're IMPERIAL Blocks so what I do here is I put some text in there like so and I'll say that they're IMPERIAL, like that, I'll type that in and I'll even put some separators in so I can just right-click there, add a separator - we'll do all this in the course, but you're seeing how quick and easy this is. So, there's information there, it's all nice and neat and tidy. I can click here now. Let's just move the Palette over so that we can see. Click on the METRIC drawing here. So what I can do now is again I can click, I can drag, I can drop, I can click, I can drag, I can drop. Now you'll notice there's a little lightning symbol there from the METRIC drawing because that's a Dynamic Block, so our Dynamic Blocks are highlighted with that little lightning symbol. The ones without the lightning symbol are just Standard Blocks. Easy, visual, dead easy to see what's going on. And again, I can just add some text here so what I'll do here, so I'll just add some text and I'll say that they're METRIC, like so, and I'll drop another text separator in like so and drop one here, another separator there. There's my Tool Palette. Now what I'm going to do now is just quickly close these and it will say do I want to save the changes, No I don't, and I'll close this one as well now. Do I want to save the changes? No I don't, and my Tool Palette now is just left there floating. If I now do a New METRIC drawing, like so, using my Start Up dialog there, my Tool Palette is still open but I can bring now a Standard Lamp straight into the drawing now. It's a bit big there, so I'll zoom out - there's my lamp. So, METRIC Block into METRIC drawing. If I'd set up an IMPERIAL drawing, I would have used my IMPERIAL Blocks. So, there's the benefit of Tool Palettes right in front of you. Everything is graphical in front of you and easy to see. You don't have to go through files or folders. There's a little Icon of it there and you just drag and drop it into your drawing. Again, productive, effective, profitable even. You're quicker, you're faster, you're working smarter in AutoCAD making yourself a more valuable commodity at work in your line of work.