In this section, we will learn how to add a custom set of blocks to the tool palette. I will use a drawing containing our custom blocks, as shown in Figure 8.44:

Here, we have three blocks: a Door, a Window and a Hex Bolt. These blocks are not made as to scale, and they are made only for this example. Also, note that these are not simple drawings; rather, they are blocks and they are named Door, Window, and Hex Bolt respectively.

In the following example, we will learn to create our own tool palette and we will add our custom set of blocks on it:

1. To start making the custom tool palette, open the palette first using the TP command, or use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + 3.

2. Right-click on any existing palette name and select New Palette from the menu, as shown in Figure 8.45 A. Give this palette a name and press the Enter key. For this example, name this palette Sample palette:

3. Now, you will have a completely blank palette. Before adding the blocks, save the drawing somewhere on your local drive or network drive. This step is essential because AutoCAD won’t allow you to add blocks to the palette if your drawing is not saved.
4. After saving the drawing, just drag and drop the blocks from the drawing area to the blank palette and the blocks will be added to the palette, as shown in Figure 8.45 B.
5. In a similar way, add the remaining blocks to this custom palette by simply dragging and dropping them into the blank palette. After adding all the blocks to the custom palette, the palette should look like Figure 8.45 C.

Now, that we have our custom tool palette with our own set of blocks, we can use these blocks in any drawing, not just in the drawing from which we inserted it into the palette. This palette will also remain available permanently in your software. Even when you close AutoCAD and restart it with a new drawing, you will still find Sample Palette when you start the tool palettes command.

The only limitation with the tool palette is that the drawing from which the blocks were added to the palette should be saved in a secure location, and if the file is deleted or renamed or the folder containing the drawing file is renamed, then the tool palette will not be able to get the blocks and will no longer work.

Although Design Center and tool palettes are great sources of ready-made blocks, sometimes you may not find the required type of block in these places, and when that happens you can look elsewhere for the blocks. The first place where you might want to look for blocks is bimobject.com, which is a free repository of blocks, and the best thing is that these blocks are uploaded by actual product manufacturers. As the blocks are uploaded by manufacturers, you can be assured that the sizes will be consistent for these blocks. Apart from Bimobject, there are other free and paid AutoCAD blocks websites too from where you can get blocks for your project. If you are downloading blocks from any online source, be sure to check them for any malware before you use them in your project.

So, now that you know about using tool palettes and customizing them to save your own blocks it's time we moved onto a completely different topic, and that's using polylines and splines. Although you already know about polylines and splines, in the next section we will explore these tools in greater detail.