Notes on the philosophy of CUI

[Anonymous]

Most of us used to use Acad.mns as the root of our menu structure, and then
MenuLoad (partial) the rest of our menus. So this was the structure:

-Acad.mns
--Express.mns
--Custom.mns
--Office.mns

However, the CUI has flipped our tidy lives. And the tendency is to try to
shoehorn the CUI into how we've always done things. I propose an
alternative, taking advantage of the Enterprise CUI in the process.

It is no longer necessary to make Acad.cui the root of structure. Think
about it; we did that before so that we could always insure that at least
Acad's menu structure was there. But CUI does some undesired things if you
continue this approach. More will be said on that later. Instead, I
recommend making Custom.cui the main .cui file, and your Office.cui the
Enterprise .cui file.

-Custom.cui (Main)
-Office.cui (Enterprise)
--Acad
--Express

Why?

> Well, the Custom.cui can be modified by the user to their heart's content
> in most shops. So that's a good starting place. As CAD Managers we don't
> want the users mucking with the Acad.cui, but if you leave it as the main
> .cui file, it is going to get mucked up.

> With the Custom.cui as the main .cui file, the users can make their own
> workspaces, and stand a reasonable chance that their customizations make
> the next round of hardware/software upgrades. Far easier to backup/migrate
> the user's Custom.cui, IMHO, than worrying about a mucked up Acad.cui
> file.

> Making the Office.cui the Enterprise .cui file is an obvious choice. It
> will be read-only inside AutoCAD to the users, and any workspaces defined
> in the Office.cui are available to the user.

> If you need to run a test environment, say, a "vanilla" AutoCAD profile,
> and your normal profile, you are actually forced (!) not to use Acad.cui
> as you main .cui file. The reason for this is that you need the Acad.cui
> to be the main .cui file for the vanilla profile, but if you leave the
> Acad.cui as the main .cui file in your normal profile, changes you make to
> the CUI will be evident in the vanilla profile. The largest visible effect
> is that your Custom/Office.mnl files will execute in the vanilla profile,
> since the Custom/Office.cui files are MenuLoaded in the main Acad.cui
> file. This will "pollute" the Visual LISP environment in your nominally
> vanilla profile.

> And speaking of profiles, as a CAD Manager you can setup another profile
> that makes the Office.cui the main .cui file so that you, the CAD Manager,
> can edit the file!

I hope that this post helps you in your efforts with the CUI.


--
R. Robert Bell

[Anonymous]

Two other things I've noticed.

Is your profile switching toolbar showing up? It includes square brackets in
the Name property, which causes it not to show up in 2006. (I have not
loaded the release version of 2007 yet.)

If you are going to be switching enterprise cui files, unhappily you are
going to need separate main cui files to deal with workspaces that are going
to have to accommodate elements that appear in one enterprise cui vs. the
other. As you have it now, you are getting unresolved elements in your
workspaces due to that.

That is one reason why I setup company-standard workspaces in the enterprise
files. That reduces the occurrence of the dreaded "unresolved" elements.

--
R. Robert Bell


wrote in message news:5161886@discussion.autodesk.com...
apologies for making it a hassle, the correct partial_is_'fxt', & is now
included along with the mnr files also.
thanks for the help, Talbot

[Anonymous]

curiously enough my 'switch profile' toolbar is displaying, in both profiles.
Is there any side-effect from the unresolved elements due to the 'missing' cui when I switch the profiles ? I have the drawing_office.cui as a general file that we all add our different workspaces to (I have a different workspace for the 2 profiles for eg), so unless the unresolved elements will cause an error, I'd prefer to live with it at the moment.
Also, we've disabled the virus software on my machine about 20 minutes ago to see if this is contributing in any way as well.

[Anonymous]

I didn't experience any slowdown with a Rec and Undo in a new drawing with
your cui files loaded. And, of course, I'm doing this with the cui file
local, but you said you still experienced the slowdown with them local.

There has appeared to be no lasting ill effects from the "unresolved"
elements, in my experience, other than the irritation at not knowing what
element was what. However, I never lived with the unresolved elements for
long.


--
R. Robert Bell


wrote in message news:5161880@discussion.autodesk.com...
curiously enough my 'switch profile' toolbar is displaying, in both
profiles.
Is there any side-effect from the unresolved elements due to the 'missing'
cui when I switch the profiles ? I have the drawing_office.cui as a general
file that we all add our different workspaces to (I have a different
workspace for the 2 profiles for eg), so unless the unresolved elements will
cause an error, I'd prefer to live with it at the moment.
Also, we've disabled the virus software on my machine about 20 minutes ago
to see if this is contributing in any way as well.

[Anonymous]

thanks for the look Robert, back to the drawing board so to speak...

[Anonymous]

Robert,

I have been following this thred since you created it and it's very helpful.

Out deployment is as follows...
Custom.cui (main)
State.cui (enterprise) (empty apart from these partials & workspaces)
----Acad.cui (partial 1)
----Express.cui (partial 2)
----CORPmain.cui (partial 3)

I have 2 questions.
1. I have an additional command in the help pulldown to execute our company help file (in CORPmain.cui) but i can't get it coming through onto the help pulldown - How do you do this? It is fine if the CORPmain.cui was loaded as the main.

2. I have a rightclick menu under viewports which change viewport scale, this does not come through from the CORPmain.cui into acad. How do you get rightclick menu's coming through?

I thought I may need to make my CORPmain.cui load 1st rather tha 3r, but this didnt help.

Cheers
Devon

[Anonymous]

I've never modified the Help pulldown, so I'm not much help there. Did you
transfer the whole help menu to your State.cui file?

Right-clicks can be sensitive. Are you specifying the menu group name in the
macro?

--
R. Robert Bell


wrote in message news:5196641@discussion.autodesk.com...
Robert,

I have been following this thred since you created it and it's very helpful.

Out deployment is as follows...
Custom.cui (main)
State.cui (enterprise) (empty apart from these partials & workspaces)
----Acad.cui (partial 1)
----Express.cui (partial 2)
----CORPmain.cui (partial 3)

I have 2 questions.
1. I have an additional command in the help pulldown to execute our company
help file (in CORPmain.cui) but i can't get it coming through onto the help
pulldown - How do you do this? It is fine if the CORPmain.cui was loaded as
the main.

2. I have a rightclick menu under viewports which change viewport scale,
this does not come through from the CORPmain.cui into acad. How do you get
rightclick menu's coming through?

I thought I may need to make my CORPmain.cui load 1st rather tha 3r, but
this didnt help.

Cheers
Devon

[Anonymous]

Robert,

WOW what a thread this is to read. Long live the thread...

I still have one concern not clear to me. I have several other AutoDesk verticals we are using. Civil 3D, LDD, etc. Why is it not good to load the base product CUI as the Enterprise? If I load this as a partial then all default workspaces in the CUI have to be transfered into what is being loaded as the Enterprise CUI.

I was attempting to keep out Company CUI loaded as a partial to the Enterprise so that it could be used in any of the applications needed.

Currently past CAD guy has them all locale right now and the base product CUI is the main. We are having lots of issues w/ menus missing from new workspaces etc. They will show up in the CUI editor but not when you exit.

I want to make sure our new setup is correct and has been thought about to reduce issues.

Thanks.

[Anonymous]

You can do that, but it means modifying the core CUI to create/modify the
workspaces for the company partial CUI file. That would mean either
centrally locating the modified core CUI file(s), or pushing the modified
core CUI file(s) to each workstation each time there is a modification.

I prefer to keep the core cui local, and unmodified. That means jumping thru
the hoop of having a specific enterprise CUI that loads al the players for
the specific profile. At issue too is that a CUI remembers what CUI files
are partial to _it_ when it is loaded as main or enterprise.

(I'm happy this thread has helped.)

--
R. Robert Bell


wrote in message news:5573750@discussion.autodesk.com...
Robert,

WOW what a thread this is to read. Long live the thread...

I still have one concern not clear to me. I have several other AutoDesk
verticals we are using. Civil 3D, LDD, etc. Why is it not good to load the
base product CUI as the Enterprise? If I load this as a partial then all
default workspaces in the CUI have to be transfered into what is being
loaded as the Enterprise CUI.

I was attempting to keep out Company CUI loaded as a partial to the
Enterprise so that it could be used in any of the applications needed.

Currently past CAD guy has them all locale right now and the base product
CUI is the main. We are having lots of issues w/ menus missing from new
workspaces etc. They will show up in the CUI editor but not when you exit.

I want to make sure our new setup is correct and has been thought about to
reduce issues.

Thanks.

[Anonymous]

So if I were to follow your suggestion of keeping the core locale then I would just have to have an Enterprise that is specific to that Application. Is that correct? Do you ever find that you may need to change the core CUI's or is it better to have them on the network so as you can not change them by mistake? We have roughly 150 users.

[Anonymous]

Exactly.

I've left core local (just one less file to load from the server). I try my
best to avoid editing it. If I had to edit it, then I would put it up on the
server.

--
R. Robert Bell


wrote in message news:5574238@discussion.autodesk.com...
So if I were to follow your suggestion of keeping the core locale then I
would just have to have an Enterprise that is specific to that Application.
Is that correct? Do you ever find that you may need to change the core CUI's
or is it better to have them on the network so as you can not change them by
mistake? We have roughly 150 users.

[Anonymous]

Do you ever have issues w/ users messing up the core CUI's if left local?

[Anonymous]

I haven't, because it is partial to the enterprise file. Even if they did
mess it up, it is easy to restore, since a OOTB copy is kept in
UserDataCache.

--
R. Robert Bell


wrote in message news:5575203@discussion.autodesk.com...
Do you ever have issues w/ users messing up the core CUI's if left local?