Accessing palettes in AutoCAD

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Autocad uses pallets for many things.

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There are almost as many ways to access them as there are pallets themselves.

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Again, they all do different things. So functionality varies

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but they all have some things in common.

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One of those is where you can find most of them.

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Click on the view tab of the ribbon

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here, you'll find the pallets panel

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as is typical in Autocad.

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The most often used are shown with large

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icons and the more infrequent tools are smaller,

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there are more defined in the additional tools area.

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I'll click on the down arrow and pin the menu in place.

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These palettes are all more 3D related tools than the others.

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Any pallets that are open will be highlighted.

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You can turn one on by clicking on the icon or turn one off in the same manner.

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Let's unpin the additional tools menu and allow it to collapse.

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We'll start by using the properties pallet.

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If it's not already displayed, click on it to turn it on.

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Currently, the pallet is floating

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that is, it's not connected to the main user interface and it can be moved around.

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You can even move it to another monitor. If you like

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moving a pallet is easy,

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just press and hold your left mouse button on

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the sidebar and drag it to your preferred position.

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Release the mouse. When you're done,

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you're also able to resize a palette.

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Like most U I objects hover over an edge to see the stretch icon.

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Again. Keep your mouse button down. While you stretch

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here, you can see how the bottom stretch works.

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The side opposite of the side bar does the same thing

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even more efficient though

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may be the corner stretch icons which can resize

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the pallet in both directions at the same time,

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which is a real time saver.

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Once you get your pallet sized,

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it will stay that way as long as the software is closed properly

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or you can save it to a workspace where it will reside even if it were to crash.

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I mentioned the sidebar. Let's take a look at that. We'll start at the bottom.

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The first thing you'll see is the pallets icon from the ribbon

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above that is the name at

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the top left. You'll find three icons.

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The bottom one is the proper

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icon. We'll come back to that in a moment

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in the middle, you'll find the auto

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hide icon

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and at the top is the close icon normally shown as an X as it is here.

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Let's look at the bottom two icons as I

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assume you understand the concept of closing a pallet,

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click on the properties icon which will open a pop up menu.

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There's another way to get to this menu.

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So I'll move the mouse away and click to dismiss it.

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This time place your cursor anywhere over the sidebar and right click,

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you'll get the same menu. This way,

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I personally prefer this method

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as I don't have to be quite as precise with my mouse.

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Let's leave this menu up so we can go through its different options.

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We'll quickly look at the first three items.

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The first is move.

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Well, we've already seen how easy it is to move a pallet,

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but so that, you know, it's here too.

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The same goes for size and clothes.

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All three are kind of a long way to get there.

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And using Autocad is always about saving picks and clicks, isn't it?

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So it's off to the good stuff.

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There are a couple of ways to make a pallet dock

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itself to either the left or right side of the UI.

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But to do either

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you have to tell the pallet to allow docking and the properties pop up.

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It's checked by default, but it may not be on your system

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if so click on it to allow

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notice when you do the two options below light up too.

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Now that docking is allowed

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drag the pallet to the left until you get

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close enough for the magnetic snap to take over,

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the palette will change its appearance into a

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white outline in a dark background or black.

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If you're in a white background,

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when it does

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release the mouse button and the pallet will snap on to the left side of the editor.

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The pallet will be fully visible at this point.

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You can resize its width by hovering over the right edge

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until the stretch icon appears,

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press and hold your left mouse button to drag it to your desired width.