menu bar pull-downs go missing

[Gh_man]

The AutoCAD setup in our office has various customization, including custom pull-down menus and custom toolbars, both in a custom CUIX. The CUIX is stored on the network. Occasionally our network goes down (for reasons beyond my control), and the CUIX is unavailable. Starting a new CAD session while the network is down, unsurprisingly, results in no toolbars or pulldowns, due to no CUIX.

The strange part: when starting a new session once the network is back up, the CUIX and toolbars re-appear without difficulty. The menu pull-downs do not. The menubar (with the standard pull-downs) is present, but our custom pull-down menus are not. Unloading and reloading our custom CUIX brings them back, and adding a new pull-down makes all other custom pull-downs appear as well. The pull-down menus are still loaded (according to the CUI menu), they're simply not visible, and I don't see any option to unhide them.

As always, any insights are greatly appreciated!

[Anonymous]

We have all custom files local to the users computer.  When a modification is needed to the 'Enterprise' CUIx, it is updated automatically to the users computer.  This is helpful also, because we have many laptops.   With the custom files local, laptops can work when not connected to the network.

[Gh_man]

An interesting solution, it certainly would remove the dependency on the network. How do you handle the auto-updating of local files?

[dgorsman]

Do you have workspace set to auto-save or not?

[Anonymous]

In our opening LSP, I have the below actions:

• If connected to the network, ping a LSP file for a variable.  Example 20150723.1
• If their local variable is equal, then do nothing.
• If their local varialble is not equal, then a CMD batch file will be executed.  This batch runs a ROBOCOPY /MIR action.

[Gh_man]

dgorsman: I'm not sure about the auto-save. How would I find out?

jclaidler: the weird thing is that in our case, the problem occurs even when the user currently has the necessary files, so long as they didn't have them on the prior log-in. Nevertheless, that might fix it, by ensuring that a "previous bad log-in" never occurs. I admit that I'd like to know the root cause of the problem though, ie., why the menus vanish to begin with, and fix it there. (And that root cause *might* be as simple as "it's a bug in CAD", but I don't want to assume that is the case.)

[Anonymous]

What happens when you re-establish the current workspace?

Plus I agree with dgorsman, verify the auto-save is turned off with the workspace.

[Gh_man]

dgorsman and jclaidler, I think between the two of you, you've hit on a 90% effective solution!

I did *not* have workspace settings auto-saving. (I wasn't even aware of the option.) What is more, when I change workspaces (including re-selecting the current workspace), the missing menus re-appear!

This being the case, I can set all of our PC's to auto-save workspace changes, and teach the users to re-select their workspaces if things go wrong. I'd like it even better if I could have the workspace reloading happen automatically, but I don't know of a way to do that, since each user has a unique workspace with a different selection of toolbars they prefer to use.

oh, and thanks for the pic, jclaidler, that was a nice extra assist. 🙂

[Gh_man]

Correction:
If I leave auto-saving OFF, (as you suggested above), I seem to get the desired results. I did a series of tests, which were a bit confusing because a couple of times (with auto-save off) my toolbars reverted to their default CUIX locations and states, while on (most) occasions they stayed in their proper customized locations. However auto-save off seems mandatory, since having it on saves the "broken" state of missing menus. I'm left a bit confused as to why the toolbars occasionally reverted, so I'll have to keep an eye on it and see if I can spot a trigger cause.

[dmfrazier]

"We have all custom files local to the users computer.  When a modification is needed to the 'Enterprise' CUIx, it is updated automatically to the users computer.  This is helpful also, because we have many laptops.   With the custom files local, laptops can work when not connected to the network."

I have things set up very similar to the OP and occasionally have had similar issues.

I'm reluctant to go the copy route as you've described (though I'm sure I could make it work here).  I decided to use Windows' Offline Files functionality to keep the network folders available for notebooks when they are offline (and even had it set up on desktops to avoid issues with occasional network "blips").  I wonder if you have ever considered it and tried to make it work in your environment.