Third Party CUIX loads, then AutoCAD crashes when opening new drawing/closing drawing

[anna.teintze]

Hello!

Long time reader, first time posting.

I use vanilla AutoCAD extensively for my work almost exclusively with 2D. We have a company that we get products from who have their own software for building 3D conveyor for spec and pricing purposes. They have created a CUIX file for AutoCAD so that the software can be used in AutoCAD by their integration partners. This CUIX is not loaded upon startup. AutoCAD saves, closes, and loads drawings as normal prior to loading the CUIX. After loading the CUIX, opening a new drawing with crash AutoCAD, closing a different drawing will crash AutoCAD, and occasionally saving a drawing will crash AutoCAD. No error is given, however, the AutoCAD crash report appears stating an error has occurred. Previous versions of this software paired with their respective AutoCAD version operate without this particular issue.

Things I have tried:

Restoring/updating/reinstalling third-party software.

Restoring/updating/reinstalling AutoCAD 2022.

Unloading/Reloading third-party software.

Moving third-party CUIX to appropriate AutoCAD 2022 CUIX folder.

Emailing third-party software support. They said it was an AutoCAD problem...

I don't have much knowledge about lisp or CUIX structure. I don't even know how to open the CUIX file to look at its code.

What I want is maybe a hint as to what could be causing the crashes inside or outside of the third-party CUIX? Honestly, even speculation is helpful at this point, especially since I can't exactly post another company's code on the internet.

Sincerely,

Anna

[Sea-Haven]

Your 1st step is go back to the company providing the cuix as your problem starts when you load the menu.

[martti.halminen]

This really looks like something caused by the third-party software, so hitting their support again should be the way.

Generally, crashing AutoCAD via Lisp is difficult, unless you manage to tickle some AutoCAD internal error.

- unless a lisp program loads and calls an .arx program, where in normal C++ style crashing everything is much easier.

On the other hand, the CUI system isn't written in Lisp. The implementation language is not directly visible, but my guess would be C#.

A .cuix file is zipped from several components. GNU Emacs opens it as such, and if you rename the file from .cuix to .zip any unzip program can do it.

- The insides are mostly XML, and clearly not intended for user access, so making sense of them may be painful.

An easier way would be running the CUI command in AutoCAD.

Try starting two separate AutoCAD sessions. One out-of -the box, the other with the third-party software loaded, and compare what you see with CUI in both.

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[anna.teintze]

@Sea-Haven I'm going to try reaching out to them again this morning. So far they have been reluctant to admit there is a problem, but I hope I have enough evidence that it can't be ignored anymore.

@martti.halminen When I load the default in a separate window from the third-party software loaded instance is there anything specific I should be looking for in the CUI menu? When I looked at the CUIX for the third-party software in CUI with the software loaded before I didn't see any commands that directly referenced the normal save/close/load commands, but the software does have its *own* save/load commands that are specific to the objects/blocks the program pulls in.

[Sea-Haven]

The save/load commands within the cui are exposed in the Macro line so copy and paste to here so can see what they are doing if just a Command then its a company problem with that command. You can copy that command to command line and see if it crashes.

[anna.teintze]

@Sea-Haven @martti.halminen I spoke with the guy who supports the third-party software. He indicated that these crashes do not occur for all users. They seem to occur for users who use an additional third-party software to save their drawings to a server. From how he described it, the two software would conflict when a save/load/close command to a file on the server was made. My company, so far as I am aware, does not use a third-party software to save to our server. I have never had to load an additional software to AutoCAD to save to our server. He indicated that since the crash does not throw an error, that he believes that the crash is from AutoCAD's side and not the side of the third-party software. I have since opened a ticket with AutoCAD, but so far I have not received any response.

As far as the macro, the macro seems to be very short for saving, ie. ^C^Chysaveproject . I don't immediately see where I can look at the guts of the macro, but I will dig around in the third-party's software folder to see if there is a relevant file or library that I can look at.

Thank you so much for your recommendations and suggestions thus far. It has helped me narrow down the avenues I must pursue to resolve this irritating problem.

[martti.halminen]

One place to look is the .mnl file with the same name as the .cuix file (if any) in the same directory.

That is one way to install Lisp functions associated with an user interface.

The problem with that is that also commands loaded any other way - in whatever language - are also visible in the CUI system.

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[anna.teintze]

Looking at the relevant directory there does not appear to be a .mnl file. I see a .dll and a .mnr file with the same name. However, I do not have anything to open this with and opening these in notepad is like trying to read Wingdings font.

I do have a meeting with AutoCAD support later today so hopefully I can get more answers, or more questions. I'll keep y'all posted.

[anna.teintze]

So the meeting yesterday went well. The AutoCAD support person observed the behavior of the program saving to the server and to my desktop. She suggested that I get in touch with my IT department to see if there is a system variable that doesn't like the third-party software loaded AutoCAD accessing the server or if there is a folder permission that causes the issue. I am hopeful that this will reveal some answers, however, I am cautiously optimistic since previous versions of AutoCAD and the relevant third-party software for that version did not have that issue before for my company.