If you can actually write an article explaining the above, then I will bow down and worship you. Otherwise, I don't believe you.
gee sinc, it "was" the guys first post, you coulda cut him some slack ...
...
... nah you're right, I guess not, me neither.
Yeah, I coulda cut some slack. Guess I've spent so much time trying to debug this CUI that having someone say "It's simple" without providing any real help got my gumption up. Still, if he could manage to put together an article explaining how to get everything to work right, he would elate a huge number of people.
When it comes to Land Desktop, Civil Design Companion, and Survey (the primary package we've been using up until recently), the closest I've come to getting everything working goes something like this:
Make a copy of CUSTOM.CUI, and call it "Company.CUI". Place all custom commands and scripts in this CUI. (In order to do this, set Company.CUI as your Main CUI in OPTIONS - then you can edit the CUI in the CUI editor.) Make sure you also change the name of the customization group in the CUI editor - i.e., at the very top of the tree in the upper-left portion of the CUI editor, make sure you change "CUSTOM" to say "COMPANY". Then add your custom commands to toolbars as desired. You can also link in basic CUIs like ACMAP.CUI and EXPRESS.CUI if you want to add some of those commands to some custom toolbars. Just keep in mind that this CUI should be considered a "Base" CUI, so it should have no Land Desktop, Civil Design, or Survey commands in it.
Create another copy of custom.CUI, called "CompanyLand.CUI" (remember to also change the name of the customization group in the CUI editor). Make a copy of "Land.DLL", and call it "CompanyLand.DLL". Set CompanyLand.CUI as the Main CUI in OPTIONS. Make sure you change the name of the CUI group from "CUSTOM" to "COMPANYLAND". Link in all of the following as Partial CUIs, in this order: LAND.CUI, ACMAP.CUI, ACETMAIN.CUI, CIVILDESIGN.CUI, SURVEY.CUI, Company.CUI. It's a real pain linking in all these CUI files, because of the way the CUI editor works, but that's par for the course. Now, in CompanyLand.CUI, create all custom commands and toolbars that have anything to do with Land Desktop, Civil Design Companion, or Survey.
At this point, you should have a main CUI that works for everything except for creating custom toolbars that contain Map commands. For some reason, all Map tool buttons turn into clouds when you add them to a new toolbar. I think you can get around this if you can combine all the icons in "acmap.DLL" and "land.DLL" into a single file called "CompanyLand.DLL", but I'm not entirely sure how to do that. I think I remember seeing something about it once, but I believe it involved a little utility someone wrote. (And you can actually get around the icon problem by saving a copy of the icon to a BMP file, and then pointing your new toolbar button icon to the BMP file. This is rather annoying, but it works.) At this point, everything else seems to work (I think).
Here's where the real problems start. Create a new CUI file, called "User.CUI", and set it as the Main CUI. (Again, make sure to also change the name of the customization group in the CUI editor.) Make another copy of "land.DLL", and call it "User.DLL". Now set User.CUI as the Main CUI, and CompanyLand.DLL as the Enterprise CUI. The user can now create new toolbars, but with the same issue as before (all Map toolbar icons will appear as clouds). In addition, shortcut menus defined in User.CUI are ignored, so the user cannot customize those. Also, if you go into the CUI and attempt to edit one of your workspaces, you will see that all menus show up as "Unresolved reference" in the upper-right quadrant of the CUI editor. Attempting to use the Transfer tab to transfer in workspaces results in erratic results.
That's about the best I can manage. At least it should be relatively easy to upgrade, though, since the Autodesk-provided CUI files are not edited, and can be simply replaced with the new ones when the new version comes out (excepting, of course, any changes Autodesk may have made, like in 2007 when they moved all the Layer Tools from ACETMAIN.CUI to ACMAP.CUI, forcing the user to re-create any custom toolbars that included Layer Tools).
Randomly, the "Recent Commands" menu may appear inside the Points menu at the top of the screen. I don't know why. I think it has something to do with shortcut menus getting mixed up with normal menus, but since the Land Desktop "Point" shortcut menu is not included in the CUI, it's difficult to tell what's going on.
