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The Tutorials section provides over 100 original tutorials for AutoCAD, 3ds Max and other design applications. Michael’s Corner is an archive of productivity articles that brings you the best AutoCAD tips and tricks. Our Forum is a lively community where AutoCAD users can ask questions and get answers. The Downloads area provides free AutoCAD blocks, free AutoLISP routines and free images.

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AutoCAD Productivity

Tool Palette Basics

by Michael Beall

From: AutoCAD Productivity Articles #144
Originally published: February 2016

I learned something new about tool palettes last year — thanks to Nate at Wellcare in Tampa — and I wanted to pass it along. It's a trick that I should have thought of and can be used in a number of situations in AutoCAD. Specifically, the Ctrl key!

Short version: Rather than doing a right-click Copy / right-click Paste — which always put the copy at the bottom of the tab — simply hold down Ctrl, then drag & drop.

How to Copy Tools Onto and Between Tabs on a Tool Palette

  1. Open the Tool Palette (Ctrl + 3). [For future reference, if you're new to palettes, I have a sample palette on my website, complete with a block source drawing and instructions.]

  2. Copy a toolTo copy a tool below itself, hold down Ctrl, select the tool, then drag it down a smidge and release. You should see a very small plus-sign at your cursor indicating that you are making a copy.

  3. To copy a tool between tabs, hold down Ctrl, then drag your cursor onto another tab and hold it there. You will initially see a No-Can-Do sign, but then it will flip over to that tab.

  4. Drag your tool to the desired location — you will see the same plus-sign at your cursor — then release!

    Copying between tabs

See all the articles published in February 2016

Michael's Corner

Between 2003 and 2016, Michael Beall (and one or two guests) wrote almost 600 articles for CADTutor. The focus of these articles is AutoCAD productivity, and although some of them are now more than a few years old, most remain relevant to current versions of AutoCAD. The article above is just one example. Check out Michael's Corner for a full listing.

Tip of the Day

Auto-repeating Commands

Editing the Circle macro in the CUISometimes you need to repeat a command lots of times and it can be a bit tedious doing the usual Right-Click and Repeat… or even using the Enter key on the keyboard. It would be really useful if you could just keep a command auto-repeating until you hit the Escape key Esc. Well, you can. All you need to do is make a small change to the CUI.

For example, say you want to draw lots of circles and have the circle command auto-repeat so that you can just pick center, radius, center, radius etc. Here's what you do:

  1. Select View ❯ Toolbars… from the pull-down menu to display the CUI dialogue box.
  2. In the "Customizations in All CUI Files" section, click on "Toolbars" and then "Draw" to reveal the Draw commands, and then click "Circle".
  3. The Properties area now changes to display the Circle button properties and under the "Macro" heading, you will see the macro used to start the Circle command. By default, this macro is: ^C^C_circle. To cause the Circle command to auto-repeat, simply add a "*" before the existing macro. Once edited, your macro should look like this: *^C^C_circle.
  4. Now click the "OK" button to save and return to the drawing.

Try the circle command and see what happens.

This technique can be used with most commands. For example, if you are doing a lot of dimensioning, you could auto-repeat the Linear Dimension command so that you can draw all your dimensions without breaking stride.

Today's tip is by fuccaro

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