Menu vs. Palette

[AOadmin144]

A client wants me to assist with CAD standards. They want menus or palette's for drawing setup.
Setup dimension, style & layers.

Historically I have always maintained existing menu files but this is the first time I am starting from scratch.

I will be using Palette's for block insertion tasks, but the question is should I use a partial menu or a tool palette for drawing setup.

Yes we will have .dwt template files but the question is existing drawings and standarding layers, dimension and text styles.

I am thinking about how to structure this and the pro's and con's of each approach.   Ideally a user would pick what kind of plan they have, for example a site plan vs a floor plan and then what scale the drawing is.   The menu/palette would then setup the dimensions and text styles with the proper scale value.

This is for ACA 2010 and the users have no training on ACA nor will get any so we cannot really use those features.    Thoughs?

[pendean]

So what do you do now at your location, for yourself/company, to address these issues? I'm thinking is if it works for you it will work for others since you are the one tasked with creating it all.

[AOadmin144]

There is nothing currently.

I only ask for opinions as to the pro's and con's of both approaches.

its 2012, should I be creating 2004 era pull down menu's for standard setups?

[pendean]

You cannot create CUIx files/content in 2012 for 2010 users: you will need access to a 2010 AutoCAD version to customize menus. No workaround unless youo wish to avoid CUIx files and write everything in MNU format.

2004 does not have CUIx menu files, just old MNU formats for menus.

AFAIK there are no issues with Toolpalettes, and AFAIK there was ntohing in 2012 that was not in 2004 in TPs.

DWTs is the way to go for new files creation: with old/existing files, INSERTing them into your DWTs and creating new files is the best-practice solution since you otherwise will need to deal with AutoCAd's #1 rule (content already in a file is not replaced by outside content OOTB easily).