Tool Palettes not Shown

I am relatively new to using autocad for rendering purposes, and applying material properties, most of my work usually using 2d.

However I am having a problem (or missing a setting somewhere) in that my tool palettes are not being displayed. I have loaded the full material libraries on installation, checked the tool palette customization (and says they are loaded), and even downloaded the service pack 1 (still using AutoCAD 2008) but I can't seem to find why I can not see these icons and decriptions for each tool palette tab.

I have attached a picture, can someone help me figure where to fix this?

Thanks

Thats AutoCAD 2008..dont know why the smiley face keeps coming up!

Is that an error message at the bottom right? It almost looks like the tool pallete over there, but all your text is garbled on my screen because the image is too large to post here clearly.

Maybe crop it down and repost?

Within AutoCAD, try pressing "CTRL+3" to trigger the window.. it should open and close it (at least it does on ver 2004 ). (it's also found in the "tools" pulldown menu).

The reason you get the is because it's made by putting "8" and ")" together.

Sorry about that, I just intended to show that the materials were listed but did not show up when any of the palettes were selected. I will try and post again. I did get an error when re-installing AutoCAD related to the flash player but from what I read that has been typical, and should not affect anything.

Well, the image is clear now, but I don't know what's causing it. Have you tried right-clicking in the area where they should appear?

I hope someone else with 2008 can hook you up with a suitable answer..

yes I have tried the right-click and then tried to adjust the viewing options, no help. I am stumped on this. Thanks for looking anyway

Is there anyone out there that has experienced this before? Could it be some kind of setting I am missing? Using these tool palettes is generally the main way I would apply a material to an object.

thanks

Maybe you should check the Tool pallete path in "Options"?

Perhaps you don't have permission to access that folder, or the files aren't in that directory?

I'm guess that since noone else is helping, they either don't use tool palettes, or they haven't seen this before.

Immediately after first starting AutoCAD, at the command line, press "F2" and let us know if there are any "can't find" or "can't load" error messages in there.

Well no errors are produced when loading AutoCad, as seen from pressing F2.

However it looks as though my Tool Palette Path (and possibly others) may be pointed wrong or missing. Please see the following attachments.

Cad wants C:\Users\Matthew1\AppData\Roaming\Autodesk\AutoCAD 2008\R17.1\enu\support\ToolPalette

I have C:\Users\Matthew1\ (no app data folder and so on.) How does that happen? I have re-installed the program and re-paired at least twice

Do you know if Autodesk provides user support for something like this?

It's a hidden folder.. you're just not seeing it. That shouldn't stop the program from seeing it though. I'd still take a peek to ensure they're where you think they are.

That's Vista isn't it? You'd need someone else to instruct you on how to view hidden files/folders (unless it's still in the "view" pulldown on the top menu on your "files browser" or whatever you wanna call it.)

Hey.. doesn't Vista have a security setting that requires you to have permission to access your user folder? Maybe it's denying AutoCAD access and not telling you about it? I suspect AutoCAD would be missing all kinds of stuff if that were true though.

Maybe there's a Patch for that? are you keeping your patches/updates up-to-date?

Wait a sec though.. why would pallete menus be thrown into the various user folders anyways? I thought they'd go into the main install directories by default, otherwise other users can't see them. That may not be a problem for you (unless you're not matthew ) but I imagine it'd inconvenience SOMEONE down the line.

Well I got it figured out. No problem with vista but I think something must have happened during the installation. I had all the materials/objects and such listed in the file folder, however each item was 1KB in size. When comparing to a colleague's (running CAD2009), his Palettes folder had much larger file sizes. So a simple copy and paste swap seems to have done the trick!

Thanks for spurring me in the right direction!

Ahh great, no.. it was a learning experience for me too. I wonder what caused it to do that.

Maybe you needed administrator priviledges to install it? But then it shouldn't have been able to dump "placeholder" files in there. I still think it's a vista issue though.. because Vista is the devil and stuff

I am having the extact same problem, I had them opened then I clicked the little icon right below the arrow on the corner, now I can't get the tool palette to open, I clicked on the same little icon for the x-ref palettte thinking that was not the reason and now that won't open either, I tried everything looked everywhere with no luck!

Re: Missing tool palettes.

Have you tried typing the word toolpalettes at the command line?

Hi ReMark,

Yes, I tried that, there is also I command (tpnavigate) that is supposed to get your tool palette back that doesn't work either, man I don't understand they were working fine yesterday morning!

Did you verify the path to the tool palettes, and make sure they were "fully" there? (like the original Poster here discovered that they weren't?)

Even if it worked before, it'd be useful to check on them, in case something is making this happen.

Have you tried exiting AutoCAD and then starting it up again?

Have you tried changing workspaces?