Designer Express Palettes

Much like the Favorites tools, palettes allow you to pre-set the attribute values on design feature classes (DFCs) and save them into logical collections.

Palettes allow you to group design features into logical collections. This makes it easy to select a small group of design features necessary for a particular job. Features can be grouped in any way you choose. For example, by material (all wood poles) or by job (service points, secondary, etc.).

Palette Manager

The Palette Manager allows you to add, edit, or delete palettes. All palettes are shared with every user. You cannot create a private palette. Before changing or deleting a palette, check with other users.

Open an express design to enable the Palette Manager button on the Designer Express toolbar. Use the navigation buttons and trail to move to any part of the manager.

Create Palette and Add Features

This topic discusses how to create a new palette and add DFCs to it. To create a new palette, follow the steps below.

On the Designer Express toolbar, click the Palette Manager button to display the Palette Manager dialog.
Ty[e the new palette's name, then click Create. In the example below, the user is creating a palette called "Distribution Mains."

After you click Create, the Palette Manager displays the Palette Items screen. This is where you can add DFCs to it and pre-define their attribute values and cost item associations.
Select a DFC in the Class field. This field is populated with all DFCs in the current map.
Enter a description for the DFC. This is how the item will appear in the Design Palette menu.
There are two ways to add items to the palette.
- Click the Quick Add button to add the feature to the palette without modifying its attributes or cost item information. This data can be modified later.
- Click the Add & Edit button to edit the item's attribute values and cost item information before adding it to the palette.
If you use the Add & Edit button to add to the palette, the Details and Cost tabs appear. Use the Details tab to assign attribute values to the fields on the DFC. Use the Cost tab to select a cost item to be associated with the feature whenever it's placed on the map.

Search for Cost Items

The Cost tab supplies a Search field to help locate specific cost items in the list. When you enter a value in the Search field, the tool filters the list using the Code and Description fields. In the example above (Figure 4), all cost items that have "6in" anywhere in the code or description fields are displayed.
Use the navigation buttons and the trail at the top of the Palette Manager form to navigate back to the palette (Palette Items) and add more items.
Click Apply at any point to save changes. When you've finished adding and editing items in the palette, click OK.
The newly created palette appears as an option in the palette field.

Edit Palette and Palette Items

You can edit an existing palette and the items within it. To do this, open the Palette Manager . Select the palette you want to edit in the list. The selected palette is highlighted in blue (Distribution Mains in the example below).

Next to each palette you will find three buttons: Edit, Delete and Copy.

Edit: Allows you to modify the name of the palette (as it appears in the Design Palette tab) as well as add, copy or remove items from the palette. Palette items have the same three buttons available: Edit, Delete and Copy.

Delete: Removes the palette from the palette manager or the selected item from the palette. You will be prompted to confirm that you want to delete the selected palette or palette item. Deleted palettes and palette items cannot be retrieved.

Copy: Creates a copy of the selected palette or palette item and appends "Copy of" to the beginning of the name. You can copy an existing palette or palette item and edit the copy as needed.

Click Apply at any point to save changes to the palette. When you've finished editing the palette, click OK to save changes. Click Cancel to dismiss the Palette Manager without saving any changes made since the last time the Apply button was clicked.

Place DFC from Palette

Once you have created palettes, you can select them from the Palette field on the Designer Express toolbar. The Default palette displays the design feature classes (DFCs) in the current stored display.

With a palette selected, its DFCs are displayed on the Design Palette list in the Table of Contents. To populate the Design Palette, you must have an express design opened. The user can click a design feature on the Design Palette list and place it on the map.