How to add drafting symbols to tool bars?

I'm not sure if that was the right way of saying what I want. I draw hydraulic schematics at my job. There are standard symbols used in these drawings. Someone has put many of these on the company server in folders. My question is, how to get them for immediate access in a toolbar type of thing? I tried putting them in a folder in my documents and then copy paste onto my drawings but that was not easy for me. AutoCad Lt 2008 Jim

Put them on a Tool Palette instead. It's less work.

If I'm understanding correctly what your asking I think I have a solution for you. I have never used AutoCAD LT and I am going under the assumption that it works the same for this as AutoCAD Civil 3D Land Desktop Companion.

I have done two things to do what your needing: 1) Go to Design Center (Command: adcenter). From there you can open it to the path of your blocks and you can actually insert your symbol blocks from here which actually takes a couple extra steps than 2) From there in Design Center right click on the folder that contains your symbols and select "Create Tool Pallette of Blocks". Once it completes it will pop up with a Tool Pallette containing all you symbols which you will be able to drag and drop into your drawing.

I leave my Tool Pallette docked and collapsed on the left side of my screen so that I only have to put my cursor on it for it to open up, select the symbol and drag it over.

You can probably do this with the Ribbon also but I have not started using the Ribbon yet so I don't fully know it's capabilities. Personally the Ribbon clutters the screen too much for my tastes.

But that should help you, pending that LT works the same in this as LDC does.

I will try. I tried a months ago but didn't understand how.

You can open Design Center find the folder that contains the blocks and drag-n-drop these onto a new tool palette. Take a look at your AutoCAD Help file.

I might suggest that you invest in a good after-market AutoCAD book too.

Will work on that. Funny. When I agreed to start doing these drawings, I had no idea how much there is to autocad.

What types of drawings are you working on?

I take it then your background was not in drafting or CAD, right? Then what?

I have been a hydraulic mechanic for almost 30 years. Now I help with technical issues and sometimes help with new systems. I have no formal drafting training, although I grew up building model airplanes and drew many of my own plans by hand. Most of what I do now will be hydraulic schematics with the occasional pictorial drawing. I tried to do the tool pallet thing. When I go on our server and open the files with the blocks, they are on a autocad drawing(read only). How do I transfer the blocks from a drawing to the pallet? Drag an drop doesn't seem to work. Jim

Hey I did it! I opened the drawing with all the symbols/opened the design center which put all the symbols into "blocks"/I made a new pallet and all is in the new pallet now. 1 step at a time! Jim

Glad to hear you are making progress. Good things come to those too stubborn to give up.

...right click on the folder that contains your symbols and select "Create Tool Pallette of Blocks"

Dang, I didn't even know you could do it that way. Nifty!

Dang, I didn't even know you could do it that way. Nifty!

Yeah, I thought it was pretty cool when I found that. I'm getting to where I love my Tool Pallette . . . all sorts of cool things you can do with it. I even got all my linetypes, text types and hatching patterns put on there for on the fly drafting.