tool palettes

[beanus]

is it possible to get vectorworks to bring up a tool palette when you press a key, for example one of the function keys & after you've selected the tool you want the tool palette disappears until the function key is pressed again?

[Guest]

No this is not possible. However, I would have to ask what your goal is. I say that because you can assign keyboard shortcuts to the tools in a palette, including the function keys, and using the keyboard shortcut will activate the tool even if the palette is closed.

You can also create a "tool set" that groups many palettes together in a neat icon, text, or icon and text grouping. To open a paletter, youwould have to click on the related icon in the tool set. Doing so would not take up any additional screen realstate, assuming that the tool set is already open. In other words, the palette will take the place of a palette that is already open.

[beanus]

the reason I asked this is that I used to have a 2D cad package that you could program to make tool palettes or a list of menu items appear under the mouse cursor & disappear once you selected the tool or menu item, this saved a lot of time & mouse movement

[Petri]

Fair enough. The tool palettes may, however & notwithstanding, be just what you need: you can customise them, remove them, make your own etc. to your heart's content. It's a different user interface, but it is a different program. If the other one worked for you, why not stick with it?

EDIT

There are 653 items in the Standard Issue of VW Designer Plug-ins folder (tools, commands, objects). The core program might have 100+ functions. I'd hate to be in charge of keyboard shortcuts for 700+ items.

Edited October 24, 2007 by Petri