Opening a drawing from a drop down menu

[dpruscino]

Hi,

I want to create drop down menus for each of my companies departments and want each department to be able to use the drop down menu to open the templates I have created for them, and I will be creating a sub menu for each template. I am unsure how to go about completing this. I have looked into scripting but I haven't done that before so I don't know where to start with that method. I am using acad 2012 but some coworkers have newer LT versions can that have any affect on completeing this task? My goal is to export the cui file to all of my coworkers.

Any help on how to do this would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

DP

[dpruscino]

Hi,

I want to create drop down menus for each of my companies departments and want each department to be able to use the drop down menu to open the templates I have created for them, and I will be creating a sub menu for each template. I am unsure how to go about completing this. I have looked into scripting but I haven't done that before so I don't know where to start with that method. I am using acad 2012 but some coworkers have newer LT versions can that have any affect on completeing this task? My goal is to export the cui file to all of my coworkers.

Any help on how to do this would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

DP

[dmfrazier]

"I will be creating a sub menu for each template."

Please clarify: What is the purpose of the sub-menu?

Are you in a networked environment, or are the users/groups isolated?

Assuming the purpose of the templates is to produce "new" drawings based on them, instead of creating the sort of menu customization you've described, an alternative you might consider is to create different "profiles" for the different departments, where each profile would point to a different templates folder so that the users/groups could just use the built-in "New" or "Qnew" command and select a template from the folder that pops up in the browse window.

"My goal is to export the cui file to all of my coworkers."

The above suggestion would be "distributed" via ARG files (exported profiles).

"...some coworkers have newer LT versions can that have any affect on completeing this task?"

As long as there is no "programming" (LISP, etc.) in the menu customization, there should be no problem with it working in LT.  Regular menu macro syntax is fine.

[Anonymous]

I work in an environment that each office/department has its own server. Each server is connected and can be accessed throught the network if needed.

I have something similar set up and here is what I did...

The admin wanted every drafting work station to have a common drop down menu with all the standard tools we have. I was asked to set up all the different departments drop down menues. So I created a CUI that containd not only the drop down menu for the menubar but also toolbars and ribbon menue for the users who did not use the menubar. I created one CUI for each department and placed the CUI on the network within the department server in a directory every user could access. I then designed the  acad.lsp file to load the CUI and placed it in that same directory. Then, the hard part, I had every user add the folder to the top of the Support File Search Path list. After doing this the CUI will auto load on every machine.

The benifit of doing it this way is that I now only have one place to go to modify the CUI for the department in the event tools have to be added removed or modified.

Hope this helps. If you have any question feel free to ask. I am not an AutoCAD guru but I was able to get this to function and it has been up and running for over 5 years.