Saving markups to the Tool Chest

The Tool Chest makes marking up documents much more efficient by storing and organizing frequently used markups for easy use and reuse. It automatically remembers recently used markups, can reapply a markup in its entirety or just using its properties, and automatically scale tools to fit different drawings without having to recreate the tool to match the drawing's scale.

Go to Window >  Panels > Tool Chest or press ALT+X to show the Tool Chest panel.

Before saving your markup to the Tool Chest, customize it to suit your needs. See the tutorial on Customizing Markups for more information on that process. If you are saving a markup that has already been customized to your liking, you can skip this part.

The Tool Chest comes with a number of tool sets (the exact tool sets in your Tool Chest is determined by your Profile), but you can add custom tool sets to your Tool Chest if you'd like. This makes organizing tools that are specific to your workflow simple. Custom tool sets can also take advantage of using tools in either Properties Mode or Drawing Mode as described below. If one of your current tool sets suits your needs, skip this part.  Otherwise, to create a custom tool set, follow these steps:

  1. Go to Window >  Panels > Tool Chest or press ALT+X to show the Tool Chest panel.

  2. Go to Tool Chest > Manage Tool Sets.

  1. Select Add.

  2. In the Add Tool Set dialog, select New and enter the Title of the tool set.
  3. To show the new tool set in the Tool Chest, select Display.
  4. To show the new tool set in all Profiles, select Show In All Profiles.
  5. To store the location to this tool set relative to the location of the current Profile, select Relative Path. Clear this option to save the full folder path to the tool set instead. For more information about Relative vs Full Paths, see Understanding Relative vs Full Paths.
  6. Select OK. You will be prompted to choose a location to save the new tool set. Choose an appropriate location and select Save.

Once you have the markup configured the way you want it, there are a couple ways to save it to a tool set in the Tool Chest. Be aware that tools saved to either the My Tools tool set or a custom tool set can take advantage of the ability to use them in either Properties Mode or Drawing Mode; if that's something that would be useful to you, be sure to save the markup to one of those tool sets.

Saving a Markup from the Recent Tools Tool Set

Markups that you have recently created or customized are automatically stored in the Recent Tools tool set in your Tool Chest.

Check your Recent Tools tool set for the markup you want to save. If it's there, use one of the following methods to move it to another tool set:

  • Drag the tool from Recent Tools into another tool set.
  • Right-click the tool in Recent Tools and select Add Item to My Tools. Be aware that this method automatically saves the tool to the My Tools tool set. Use the drag method described above to save the tool to a different tool set.

Saving a Markup from the PDF

You can also save markups to the Tool Chest directly from the PDF. Use this method if you're saving a markup that you haven't created or customized (for example, saving a markup off a document that was sent to you), though this method works just as well on markups that you created or customized yourself.

To save a markup on the document as a reusable tool, right-click the desired markup, go to Add to Tool Chest, and select the tool set to which to save it.

If you saved your tool to either My Tools or a custom tool set, you can take advantage of the ability to use the tool in either Properties Mode or Drawing Mode. You can switch back and forth between these modes, as desired.

  • Properties mode adds a new markup with the same appearance properties of the saved markup. In this mode, the properties (as shown on the Properties panel) are retained but the exact dimensions, text, and so on are not. Consider the example of a text box markup: using the tool in Properties Mode would create a new text box with the same color border and fill pattern and text properties, but no text would be inside the box yet, nor would the box have a fixed size. You would need to define the box's shape and content.

  • Drawing mode adds a new markup that is an exact duplicate of the saved markup, as if you had copied and pasted the original markup rather than made a new one of a similar type.

To change the mode of a tool in any of these tool sets, double-click on the tool's icon or right-click it and select Properties Mode/Drawing Mode (which mode is shown depends on which mode is currently active). All of the markup's information is retained when switching modes; only the icon and the way that the markup is added to the file changes when the mode is changed. By default, most tools are saved in Properties Mode, though there are some markups that always remain in Drawing Mode; Stamps and Grouped markups are two examples.