Specify Current Tool Palette or Group – New in AutoCAD 2008 TPNAVIGATE

In AutoCAD 2008 we added the ability to switch Tool Palettes and Groups at the AutoCAD command line with the command TPNAVIGATE. This means you can now use this in a LISP or in your menu to change the current Tool Palette.

From the AutoCAD 2008 Help

Command entry: TPNAVIGATE

Specify tool palette to display or [palette Group]: Enter a tool palette name, or enter g

  • Tool Palette Name
    Displays the specified tool palette.
    Specifying a tool palette that is not part of the current group, displays the specified palette and its palette group.
  • Palette Group
    Displays the following prompt.
    Specify palette group to display: Enter the name of a valid tool palette group.

    Displays the specified tool palette group. The initial prompt repeats so you can specify a tool palette name.

Note TPNAVIGATE opens the Tool Palettes window if closed.

Cheers,
Shaan

1 comment

Gee, Shaan, I’m definitely a fan of tool palettes, and have been developing an app that makes use of our own palettes. We’ve created about 5 palettes with roughly 60 tools on them. At this point they’re working very well for us, and we seem to be able to successfully install them on customer computers.
What I really wish is that there was API access to palettes. I’m sure I’m not alone in this, but haven’t seen a lot of people commenting on the lack of the ability to connect to palettes via VBA. At this point I’ve been able to get the tool palettes to behave, but it was a challenge to get clean XTP files along the way. It hasn’t been easy to figure out how to do this, because there’s not a lot of info on the structure of the XTP file, and you have to be very careful when editing one.
My impression is that the tool palette feature is still very much a work in precess, and that it WILL get better — but it’s not fully there yet.

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