CUI Editor Enhancements

CUI Editor Enhancements

dcochran
Archived Account
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Message 1 of 251

CUI Editor Enhancements

dcochran
Archived Account
Hello,

We are looking at ways to improve and enhance the CUI Editor in AutoCAD. As a customer, what improvements would you like to see with CUI?

Thanks in advance for your input!

Doug Cochran
Autodesk, Inc.
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6,863 Views
250 Replies
Replies (250)
Message 141 of 251

Anonymous
Not applicable
Bill,
We do what you are describing with no problem in 2006.
Each person has their own custom.cui, which starts out as a copy of the acad.cui (or actually the acmap.cui since we use
LDT)
That custom.cui gets stored in their profile folder.
Their custom .cui has various partial menus loaded, the partials are standard menus that users do not edit.

So each user logs in, starts acad to their profile, and works away.
User A is not affected by user B and so on since the main menu is different for each user.

The CUI system is a pain, but has just enough freedom built in (barely enough) to do what we used to be able to do.

We use the enterprise menu as a method of loading partials that you want in one profile, but not another.
You would always want the same main menu for all profiles, but use different enterprise menus to load different
combinations of partial menus for each profile.

BillZ <>
|>>>>jbryant4 wrote:
|>No, just load the .mnu as Partial CUI Files.....Basically the same as before. <<<
|>
|>Okay, maybe I just don't understand it yet and we are heavily customized here.
|>
|>The way we do it now, is that everyone works off their own .MNS and profile. The reason being is that we had so much trouble when shared machines between nightshift and dayshift. Seemed like the changes that were made on one machine affected the .MNS/interface of the other user on that same machine.
|>
|>What I did to solve the problem, was, to check each username at startup and make sure that the profile that belonged to them was set current and saved at the begining of the session. That way, any changes that were made to their interface (toolbars) were made to their own custom .mns. And if anyone crashed out during a session, the profile could be restored and it would be current because the profile had been saved regularly.
|>
|>Right now we all read off the same startup files and share the network files that run our custom apps.
|>Can I still do something like we do now?
|>
|>So what am I looking at for 2007.
|>
|>
|>We completely ignored 2006 because of all the problems that we see posted here about going to CUI, but we really don't care to get too far behind on releases either.
|>
|>TIA
|>
|>Bill
James Maeding
Civil Engineer and Programmer
jmaeding - athunsaker - com
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Message 142 of 251

Anonymous
Not applicable
I ment to mention, we make the custom.cui the main menu in all profiles for a given user.
So the enterprise menu changes between profiles, but not the main menu.

James Maeding
|>Bill,
|>We do what you are describing with no problem in 2006.
|>Each person has their own custom.cui, which starts out as a copy of the acad.cui (or actually the acmap.cui since we use
|>LDT)
|>That custom.cui gets stored in their profile folder.
|>Their custom .cui has various partial menus loaded, the partials are standard menus that users do not edit.
|>
|>So each user logs in, starts acad to their profile, and works away.
|>User A is not affected by user B and so on since the main menu is different for each user.
|>
|>The CUI system is a pain, but has just enough freedom built in (barely enough) to do what we used to be able to do.
|>
|>We use the enterprise menu as a method of loading partials that you want in one profile, but not another.
|>You would always want the same main menu for all profiles, but use different enterprise menus to load different
|>combinations of partial menus for each profile.
|>
|>BillZ <>
|>|>>>>jbryant4 wrote:
|>|>No, just load the .mnu as Partial CUI Files.....Basically the same as before. <<<
|>|>
|>|>Okay, maybe I just don't understand it yet and we are heavily customized here.
|>|>
|>|>The way we do it now, is that everyone works off their own .MNS and profile. The reason being is that we had so much trouble when shared machines between nightshift and dayshift. Seemed like the changes that were made on one machine affected the .MNS/interface of the other user on that same machine.
|>|>
|>|>What I did to solve the problem, was, to check each username at startup and make sure that the profile that belonged to them was set current and saved at the begining of the session. That way, any changes that were made to their interface (toolbars) were made to their own custom .mns. And if anyone crashed out during a session, the profile could be restored and it would be current because the profile had been saved regularly.
|>|>
|>|>Right now we all read off the same startup files and share the network files that run our custom apps.
|>|>Can I still do something like we do now?
|>|>
|>|>So what am I looking at for 2007.
|>|>
|>|>
|>|>We completely ignored 2006 because of all the problems that we see posted here about going to CUI, but we really don't care to get too far behind on releases either.
|>|>
|>|>TIA
|>|>
|>|>Bill
|>James Maeding
|>Civil Engineer and Programmer
|>jmaeding - athunsaker - com
James Maeding
Civil Engineer and Programmer
jmaeding - athunsaker - com
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Message 143 of 251

Anonymous
Not applicable
Lets just hope the people at Autodesk do not use your logic

jbryant4 <>
|>I agree.......10 seconds wow!.....Lets see, if I customize the Interface....lets say 10 times a month.....thats a total of 100 seconds.....Thats it! I am also dropping my subscription!
James Maeding
Civil Engineer and Programmer
jmaeding - athunsaker - com
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Message 144 of 251

Anonymous
Not applicable
I am amazed at how shallow your analysis is, are you reading and understanding what we are saying?
Menus are a big deal, easy customization of them is a big deal.
Don;t make people lose respect for you by posts like that

jbryant4 <>
|>"..............it's likely that they'll only ever see the first instance of the CUI dialog in any given session."
|>Come on......That's only if they customize their interface EVERYTIME they get into AutoCAD.....Ridiculous!. I am amazed at how people seem to spend most of their time looking for something to complain about....In fact, thats exactly what I am doing now!
James Maeding
Civil Engineer and Programmer
jmaeding - athunsaker - com
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Message 145 of 251

Anonymous
Not applicable
I just took another look at the jbryant4 posts in this thread and have concluded you are totally in the dark.
You might think you are brown nosing Autodesk but they are learning that people like you get them into trouble like the
CUI system!

jbryant4 <>
|>"..............it's likely that they'll only ever see the first instance of the CUI dialog in any given session."
|>Come on......That's only if they customize their interface EVERYTIME they get into AutoCAD.....Ridiculous!. I am amazed at how people seem to spend most of their time looking for something to complain about....In fact, thats exactly what I am doing now!
James Maeding
Civil Engineer and Programmer
jmaeding - athunsaker - com
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Message 146 of 251

Anonymous
Not applicable
what is this fear of irrelevant file size?
You don't want everything stored as a ICE file just to save a few KB.
If the CTB file was in XML, it would be very easy to edit with a text editor, yet, yes, it might be a few K more than in its current incarnation.
The true beauty of XML is that it is plain text, thus as an administrator I can take a look at it and see what is going on -- with a text editor, or with *any* XML editor. As a standard for static or semi-static data, it is not a flavor of the day, is the future data standard for practically everything.
But again, the XML format they chose (a weird variant of the 1.1 standard) doesn't help anything. And in fact, is probably to blame for the lag time in bringing up the interface.

--J
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Message 147 of 251

Anonymous
Not applicable
.....Which is, purely logical.....?
0 Likes
Message 148 of 251

Anonymous
Not applicable
I would say I agree, if there was a way to display the xml in a clean way, without all the tags.
We should be able to take advantage of the fact that the text file tells us its format.
That would be the right way to edit the file.
What I am essentially wanting is a text form of the CUI so I can edit a bunch of stuff at once.

Jeremiah Farmer <>
|>what is this fear of irrelevant file size?
|>You don't want everything stored as a ICE file just to save a few KB.
|>If the CTB file was in XML, it would be very easy to edit with a text editor, yet, yes, it might be a few K more than in its current incarnation.
|>The true beauty of XML is that it is plain text, thus as an administrator I can take a look at it and see what is going on -- with a text editor, or with *any* XML editor. As a standard for static or semi-static data, it is not a flavor of the day, is the future data standard for practically everything.
|>But again, the XML format they chose (a weird variant of the 1.1 standard) doesn't help anything. And in fact, is probably to blame for the lag time in bringing up the interface.
|>
|>--J
James Maeding
Civil Engineer and Programmer
jmaeding - athunsaker - com
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Message 149 of 251

Anonymous
Not applicable
uh, no.
I'd be suprised if Autodesk isn't paying you for your posts.

jbryant4 <>
|>.....Which is, purely logical.....?
James Maeding
Civil Engineer and Programmer
jmaeding - athunsaker - com
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Message 150 of 251

Anonymous
Not applicable
I have the exact same problem in LDT06 SP1. The only workaround that I
found was to re-set the current profile as current after Land Desktop has
broken the middle button. Since I knew that my users wouldn't stand for
that, I had to give in and use LAND.CUI as my main. It's a shame, too,
because I really liked RRB's philosophy on CUI organization (with custom as
main).

I've documented this any many more workarounds on my website (below).

--
Ralph Sanchez
http://www.texupport.net
--


"James Maeding" wrote in message
news:5153653@discussion.autodesk.com...
I'm glad to hear that, since that gives me hope. The problems I am seeing
happen when LDT initializes, but I have done
everything I could to make it as clean and generic as possible to see if it
was my stuff or LDT.
Its like the wheel click brings up the osnap menu one moment, then
initialize LDT, and it doesn't work, I get no osnap
menu.
I like your setup better for sure, it just hasn't worked here. I'll hold my
comments if its working everywhere else...
thx

R. Robert Bell
|>James, the mouse buttons work fine in the outlined scenario, in vanilla or
|>ABS. There is either something odd in the civil stuff, or there is
something
|>I've forgotten to tell you.
|>
|>BTW Matt, I usually advocate starting a blank cui file from the transfer
tab
|>as the main cui and overwriting Custom.cui, if it was blank, these days.
James Maeding
Civil Engineer and Programmer
jmaeding - athunsaker - com
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Message 151 of 251

Anonymous
Not applicable
2006 manual talks about possibility of discontinuing screen menus. In my opinion these should continue. This is a good place where you can have a list short but expressive text strings for a user to select options from (such as size of items, or name of standards etc.). These are static on the screen, which makes it comfortable in may occasions (though pop-ups have their own importance). Screen menus can also be dynamically refreshed in the session.
If any of the new controls provide all these features, I would appreciate if someone lets me know about it. Screen menus may go only if such a control is introduced. This other wise would leave programmers stranded.
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Message 152 of 251

Anonymous
Not applicable
Thanks James. Makes sense.
Seems to me that when we went from R14 to 2004, Adesk supplied converters to translate old custom menus to the new release.
Looks like now we have to set each user up from scratch?
Copying & pasting menus into cui's?

Anyway, thanks.
We are so much busier nowdays because of adjustments made by our new owners.

AutoDesk: Anything that you can do that would ease the pain would be nice.

Bill
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Message 153 of 251

Anonymous
Not applicable
Other reasons for which I prefer to use the files MND/MNU:

1) I continue to use the old file MND and MC.EXE (Menu compiler) for

a) support a tablet menù and use the macro to reorder the
items names

b) to have my menu in two languages in only one file MND to simplify
the maintenance, when I want to get the menù with the different
language I must only to modify one line and recompile:

- MND file -
{ITA}=
{ENG}=//

{ITA}[_Button("Rettangolo punto centrale", DrwRectCen, DrwRectCen)]...
{ENG}[_Button("Rectangle center point", DrwRectCen, DrwRectCen)]...
- END -

- MNU file -
[_Button("Rettangolo punto centrale", DrwRectCen, DrwRectCen)]...
//[_Button("Rectangle center point", DrwRectCen, DrwRectCen)]...
- END -

- MNS file - (<2006)
[_Button("Rettangolo punto centrale", DrwRectCen, DrwRectCen)]...
- END -


2) in few seconds I can modify the file MND with an editor and easily get
the updating with:

(defun C:ALE_Menu_Reset ( / Mc_Exe MnuPat)
(if (and (setq Mc_Exe (findfile "MC.EXE")) (setq MnuPat (findfile
"MyMenu.MND")))
(dos_exewait (strcat Mc_Exe " " (substr MnuPat 1 (- (strlen MnuPat) 4))) 3)
)
(if (findfile "MyMenu.mnu")
(progn
(cond
( (> (atof (getvar "ACADVER")) 16.1)
(if (setq MnuPat (findfile "MyMenu.mnr")) (vl-file-delete MnuPat))
(if (setq MnuPat (findfile "MyMenu.cui")) (vl-file-delete MnuPat))
(command "_.CUIUNLOAD" "MyMenu" "_.CUILOAD" "MyMenu.MNU")
(menucmd "p1=+MyMenu.pop1")
)
(T
(if (setq MnuPat (findfile "MyMenu.mnc")) (vl-file-delete MnuPat))
(if (setq MnuPat (findfile "MyMenu.mnr")) (vl-file-delete MnuPat))
(if (setq MnuPat (findfile "MyMenu.mns")) (vl-file-delete MnuPat))
(if (setq MnuPat (findfile "acad.mnc")) (vl-file-delete MnuPat))
(if (setq MnuPat (findfile "acad.mnr")) (vl-file-delete MnuPat))
(if (setq MnuPat (findfile "acad.mns")) (vl-file-delete MnuPat))
(command "_.MENUUNLOAD" "MyMenu" "_.MENULOAD" "MyMenu")
(menucmd "p1=+MyMenu.pop1")
)
)
(menucmd "T1=MyMenu.TABLET11") (menucmd "T2=MyMenu.TABLET21")
(menucmd "T3=MyMenu.TABLET31") (menucmd "T4=MyMenu.TABLET41")
;|i|; (alert "\nMyMenu Menù aggiornato, chiudere e riaprire AutoCAD. ")
;_e__ (alert "\nMyMenu Menù updated, please close and reopen AutoCAD. ")
)
;|i|;(alert "\nMyMenu Menù non trovato. ")
;_e__(alert "\nMyMenu Menù not found. ")
);if
(princ)
)


--

Marc'Antonio Alessi
http://xoomer.virgilio.it/alessi
(strcat "I like " (substr (ver) 8 4) "!")

--
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Message 154 of 251

Anonymous
Not applicable
Another thought:
How about having a Button view for the command list?
Most users who'd like to make their own toolbars know what the buttons look like, but not neccesarily what the command description is.
e.g. Edit Polyline, Flat Shaded etc.
This would be more like the old-style toolbar creation method.
(Which people are used to.)

Cheers,

Matt
0 Likes
Message 155 of 251

Anonymous
Not applicable
no, just load your old mnu's and mns' and they compile to cui, then use transfer tab to transfer is desired.
So yes, you do have to start with new acad.cui which is a pain.
I don't use CUI though, I still use mnu and mns.
If I make changes, its to the mnu and mns and I reload to make CUI's.
I think about 1/2 the crowd here is doing it that way.

BillZ <>
|>Thanks James. Makes sense.
|>Seems to me that when we went from R14 to 2004, Adesk supplied converters to translate old custom menus to the new release.
|>Looks like now we have to set each user up from scratch?
|>Copying & pasting menus into cui's?
|>
|>Anyway, thanks.
|>We are so much busier nowdays because of adjustments made by our new owners.
|>
|>AutoDesk: Anything that you can do that would ease the pain would be nice.
|>
|>Bill
James Maeding
Civil Engineer and Programmer
jmaeding - athunsaker - com
0 Likes
Message 156 of 251

Anonymous
Not applicable
cool, thanks for the verification on that.
Ill check the site

Ralph Sanchez
|>I have the exact same problem in LDT06 SP1. The only workaround that I
|>found was to re-set the current profile as current after Land Desktop has
|>broken the middle button. Since I knew that my users wouldn't stand for
|>that, I had to give in and use LAND.CUI as my main. It's a shame, too,
|>because I really liked RRB's philosophy on CUI organization (with custom as
|>main).
|>
|>I've documented this any many more workarounds on my website (below).
|>
|>--
|>Ralph Sanchez
|>http://www.texupport.net
James Maeding
Civil Engineer and Programmer
jmaeding - athunsaker - com
0 Likes
Message 157 of 251

Anonymous
Not applicable
I have never heard of that mc.exe.
Is that an autocad provided util, or third party?

Marc'Antonio Alessi
|>Other reasons for which I prefer to use the files MND/MNU:
|>
|>1) I continue to use the old file MND and MC.EXE (Menu compiler) for
|>
|> a) support a tablet menù and use the macro to reorder the
|> items names
|>
|> b) to have my menu in two languages in only one file MND to simplify
|> the maintenance, when I want to get the menù with the different
|> language I must only to modify one line and recompile:
|>
James Maeding
Civil Engineer and Programmer
jmaeding - athunsaker - com
0 Likes
Message 158 of 251

Anonymous
Not applicable
It came from R14.
0 Likes
Message 159 of 251

Anonymous
Not applicable
It was around long before that...

--
Craig
_______________
Dreamers don't have strategic grill locations...


"Marc'Antonio Alessi" wrote in message
news:5155665@discussion.autodesk.com...
It came from R14.
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Message 160 of 251

Anonymous
Not applicable
> It was around long before that...

The last is in my R14 CD: 15/05/1998 14.04 - 21 Kb



--

Marc'Antonio Alessi
http://xoomer.virgilio.it/alessi
(strcat "I like " (substr (ver) 8 4) "!")

--
0 Likes