Experience using the Tool Chest?

Angela Aff

What has been your experience for storing & reusing custom markups in the Tool Chest?

• How do you organize and manage your tool sets?
• What impact has this had on your efficiency?

P.S. Don't forget to check out this month's monthly challenge on Tool Sets!

vfrench

The Tool Chest is a great feature but it would be really helpful if you could move or hide the Comment and Label columns.

As well as the Subject I use the Label regularly. However, I basically never use the Comment column.

But as the minimum width on the Custom column is quite wide and you also don't have the option of hiding it, I end up using a valuable area of my screen in order so I can see what details I have under the Label.

Other than that, being able to easily access the tools that I use most often really is a great time saver.

Matt

Usually I organize in a way that follows my workflow. For designing I have a profile with tools for that purpose, for reviewing, a profile for that and so on. And separate tool chests for legends.

rafaelnunez

I agree, the Tool Chest is a great feature but it does have room for further improvement. I use the Comment column quite often and I'm having one problem that I would love to see fixed in a future update:

I have noticed that if I draw a Line (saved in a tool set with comments and in 'Properties mode') while having the 'Reuse' tool activated, I can't draw more than one line at a time without losing the comments. This problem basically renders the Reuse tool useless.

Duane Gingras

We organize tools sets by Job/Discipline. Any tools that are regularly needed we train people to drag those up to 'My Tools' so they have quick access via the keyboard. Each Discipline has a different use requirement so I just provide them with the base tools and they can re-organize as required. However we focus on using 'My Tools' as the quick access space, modified as required.

RJ Palis

@Angela Aff - Troy Barbu had a really awesome tool chest workflow that I still follow to this day. It'll be cool to see a short clip of that from the last OCBUG meeting.

Sumit Roy

We have different tool set for different departments in our company. Frequently used tools are kept in My Tools under appropriate layer.

The ability to apply tools from My Tools via numbers of keyboard, duplicate tools, use paint format to match properties, assign Layer help us to be more efficient. The Search button also helps to find out a tool very quickly.

Robert Ferguson

We use tool chests for different departments and job titles. Some job titles use multiple different tool chests. For example, we are a joist and deck company, so our Estimators have both a "Joist" tool chest with joist tools and a "Deck" tool chest for deck tools. It's mostly a positive experience. One critical feedback item is the lack of storing layer "Group" info in a given tool. So, for example, when our Estimators are adding markups to the file, we like those markups to be under the "Sales" - "Estimator" layer groups. However, the tool in the tool chest only stores which layer it's on, not the parent groups. Can this be added?