About Creating and Using Tools From Objects and Images

Tools created from objects and images can be reused whenever you need them

Tool palettes are tabbed areas within the Tool Palettes window that contain items known as tools. Common tools include

• Geometric objects such as lines, circles, and polylines
• Dimensions
• Blocks
• Hatches
• Solid and gradient fills
• Raster images
• External references (xrefs)
• Tables
• 3D rendering properties such as lights, cameras, visual styles, and materials (not available in AutoCAD LT).

Create a tool by dragging it onto a tool palette and then use it to create objects with the same properties. Suppose you drag a green circle with a lineweight of .05 mm from a drawing to a tool palette. You can then add a green circle with a .05 mm lineweight by dragging the tool to your drawing.

New geometric object or dimension tools are automatically created with an appropriate flyout, which inherits the properties of the tool. Object tool flyouts contain other objects that can be created with the same properties. Dimension tool flyouts provide an assortment of dimension types. Click the arrow on the tool to display the flyout.

Insert Blocks and Xrefs

Several options are available when you use a tool to insert a block or xref.

• Rotation. You can choose to be prompted for a rotation angle when you click and place a block or xref. This option ignores the angle specified under Rotation in the Tool Properties dialog box. The rotation angle prompt is not displayed if you drag the block or xref, or if you enter rotate at the initial insertion prompt.
• Placement. You can use object snaps when dragging blocks from a tool palette. However, grid snap is suppressed during dragging.
• Scale. You can set an auxiliary scale for a block or hatch tool to override the regular scale setting when you use the tool. (An auxiliary scale multiplies the current scale setting by the plot or dimension scale.)

  Blocks inserted from a tool palette are automatically scaled according to the ratio of units in both the block and the current drawing. For example, if the current drawing uses meters and a block uses centimeters, the unit ratio is 1 m/100 cm. When you drag the block into the drawing, it is inserted at 1/100 scale.

  Note: When drag-and-drop scale is set to be unitless in either the source block or target drawing (INSUNITS = 0), the default scale is derived from the Options dialog box, User Preferences tab, Source Content Units and Target Drawing Units settings.

Update Block Definitions on Tool Palettes

A block insertion in the current drawing is not updated automatically when you modify the block definition in the source drawing. You can redefine blocks inserted using a tool from the shortcut menu on the tool. The Redefine option might be unavailable if the block definition source is a drawing file rather than a block within a drawing file. To update a block definition that was created by inserting a drawing, use DesignCenter.