Remove palette from Tool Palettes Bar

João Cunha

is it possible remove (unload) a palette from "Tool Palettes Bar" without delete the correspondent "btc" file ?

Roy Klein Gebbinck

I am not sure if there is another procedure, but this works:
1. Exit BC.
2. Go to the file *Roamable Root*\Support\ToolPalettes\BcTpCatalog.btc (this is a text file).
3. MAKE A BACKUP OF THE FILE.
4. Edit the file by removing one or more ... sections.
5. You can also remove (or update) the ... section, but that does not seem to be required.
6. Restart BC.

Your *Roamable Root* folder depends on your operating system. Check the BC Help for more info.

Roy Klein Gebbinck

Arghhh, The "Pointy Bracket Problem" again... 2nd Attempt:

I am not sure if there is another procedure, but this works:
1. Exit BC.
2. Go to the file *Roamable Root*\Support\ToolPalettes\BcTpCatalog.btc (this is a text file).
3. MAKE A BACKUP OF THE FILE.
4. Edit the file by removing one or more <Palette>...</Palette> sections.
5. You can also remove (or update) the <PaletteOrder selection="...">...</PaletteOrder> section, but that does not seem to be required.
6. Restart BC.

Your  *Roamable Root* folder depends on your operating system. Check the BC Help for more info.

Roy Klein Gebbinck

The procedure I have tried to describe is definitely not ideal. If you import a palette that has been removed in this manner, you will create a copy of the original palette. So a more logical (safer?) approach is perhaps to just make a backup of all *.btc files before removing any of them. That way they can always be imported (=copied) from that backup location. Note that there are already backups of the palettes that are installed with Bricscad. You can find them here:
*Main Program Folder*\UserDataCache\Support\en_US\ToolPalettes\Palettes\

Jason Bourhill

You may run in to trouble if you edit BTC files while Bricscad is running. Looks like Bricscad caches the BTC file on startup and writes back out when you shut Bricscad down. So it will ignore any changes you make while Bricscad is running, and over write the changes on closing. So as Roy has noted you need to exit Bricscad first.

As BTC files are in XML format it looks like they respect XML commenting, which may be an alternative to deletion. Below is an example (hopefully)

    <!-- Begin Comment
    <Palette>
      <ItemID idValue="5F9906CC-EF82-4C48-A91B-2F39EC018C8A"/>
      <ItemName>My Palette</ItemName>
      <Url href="Palettes/My Palette_5F9906CC-EF82-4C48-A91B-2F39EC018C8A.btc"/>
      <Properties/>
      <Source/>
    </Palette>
    End Comment-->

An alternative work around to editing BTC files maybe to maintain a number of separate Toolpalette folders, and using _TOOLPALETTEPATH change the path to point to the tool palettes you want to use. This seems to work, and you could quite easily make a toolbar button to toggle between, or maybe add it to the toolpalette themselves.

BTW an easy way to find roaming folders and the like is to type the applicable environment variable into the address bar of windows explorer. e.g. %APPDATA%. This trick also works with saved profiles (.ARG). Attach a screen grab to illustrate what I mean.

Regards,

Jason Bourhill

CAD Concepts

appdata.png

João Cunha

Thanks, I'll try that, but I think in a future update / upgrade they could create an option to unload palettes more easily...