Adding Icons to Pulldown Menus

[Julio_Soto]

So have several pulldown menus that have quite a bit of content. I created these the old-school way with an .mnu file. I used an elaborate excel spreadsheet to populate hundreds of lines of text for all my menus that I then copy/paste into a txt file and save as .mnu. I then import that into AutoCAD through the CUI.  Menu looks something like this.

My problem is that I can't figure out the syntax for adding icons to the commands. 

I tried extracting the cui file and viewing the MenuGroup.cui file with an XML editor.  I can see the lines where the icon names go. I made a test where I filled the path in with the file name. But when I try to add this back to the root cui i get fatal errors in AutoCAD.

[pendean]

What is "INSWELD" in your macro?

How exactly did you "load icons" in your older AutoCAD version from that MNU file?

And if I may I ask
1- Why not just use Toolpalettes?
2- ... or ADCENTER?
3- and have you tried to just use MENULOAD command to load/use your existing MNU file(s)?

[Julio_Soto]

INSWeld is a Lisp I wrote to insert a dynamic block and change some parameters like the flip or visibility, etc..

And I never had icons in the old menus. This is something new I'd like to add for some commands.

1 - We do have tool palettes. They can get somewhat large if I add all the options. Like if I have an icon for a weld near side, far side and both, that's 3 icons for one weld type. Multiply that by all the weld types. It gets quite big. The toolpalette version simply has a fillet weld, it's a dynamic block that can be flipped if needed.  Some people prefer the hierarchy of a pull-down menu.  Our tool palettes do contain a lot of content already. 

2 - For similar reasons above.

3- I just use the cui interface to import my mnu files. AutoCAD will convert that to a cui file. But to change icons through the cui is incredibly painful. 

[pendean]

CUI is painful to use, and unavoidable. Sorry.
If you want icons in the Ribbon or menus then you'll have to use the interface AFAIK.

In the meantime you have the same exact pulldown like you've always used that everyone is familiar with for the shortterm.

TPs need to be grouped to work best.
ADCENTER requires quite the folder organization on your part to work best too.
If you are in AutoCAD 2022-2023 the BLOCK interface adds a new interface that is very much worth exploring as well, give it a try.

HTH