Topic: installing pulldown menus from 2000i into 2006

[TallCoolOne]

hello people, I'm in need of some help.  i am trying to take pulldown menu's that i use at work on CAD 2000i and install them onto a outside contractors PC running CAD 2006. i copied all files for the pulldown menus, (blocks, borders, vba files, lisp files, mns files), to there network drive, set all the paths, loaded the menu. The menu appears after the help tab, does drop down but will not run most of the  vba's and lisp's, will insert border and title block, and will do a title block update which is a vba program. But for most of the items on the menu it says  (macro can not be found) or it wont place the item you picked when you pick something on the pulldown menu. I'm just starting to understand adding menu's not to sure of 2006. also Now when you start ACAD 2006 it loads up and a window pops up that says can't find COMMANDLINE  something !!.... I'm not at the system so i cant remember exactly what it said. any ideas would be greatly appreciated! Remember I'm not very experienced at 2006   

[Arizona]

I would believe that the menu is not finding the associated programs due to the support paths not pointing to these directories.
Just my 2 cents.

[Bryco]

There's a few things that could go wrong here.
1) The menu may be hardpathed to say i/yadayada and you may have to do a find and replace that to the path you now have.
2) Vba requires a reference to cad
alt+f11 ->tools->references autocad 2006 etc.
The fact that any vba runs points to you having done this (I think) but you may have multiple projects.
3) Are you autoloading the lisp you require?

[Mark]

I'm assuming you did a 'menuload' which should have converted everything to a .cui file, so don't forget you have to edit your menus via the cui editor.

In the cui editor, under your custom menu, "Partial CUI Files" you should see "LISP files" you can add any .lsp files you want to auto-load there.

[TallCoolOne]

thanks Bryco and Mark, i really appreciate the help !!
 i dont use CAD 2006 so i dont know where the .cui editor is located. Is the editor similar to 2001i's visual basic editor in the tools menu. do i copy the whole lisp files in to the custom.cui file, what about the vba programs?.   THANKS again

[Bryco]

Ooh the cui takes a bit of work.
It's not that hard but you need to play with it a bit.
Best if you can find out what that error message is exactly.

[Mark]

so i dont know where the .cui editor is located.

enter 'cui' on the command line to bring it up.

Is the editor similar to 2001i's visual basic editor in the tools menu.

Not even close!

do i copy the whole lisp files in to the custom.cui file,

see screen shot. you simply use a common file dialog.

what about the vba programs?

If you search paths are correct they should load automatically.

[TallCoolOne]

Hey Mark,
 thanks for pointing me in the right direction. i will probably be going over this Friday, to see if i can get it working.

Thanks Mark for the details!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Birdy]

In the cui editor, under your custom menu, "Partial CUI Files" you should see "LISP files" you can add any .lsp files you want to auto-load there.

Question:
is that the same as the Startup Suite (which I've never liked)
or is it more like the autoload function in my acaddoc.lsp file thusly: (autoload "FILENAME" '("COMMAND1" "COMMAND2"))

[Mark]

In the cui editor, under your custom menu, "Partial CUI Files" you should see "LISP files" you can add any .lsp files you want to auto-load there.

Question:
is that the same as the Startup Suite (which I've never liked)
or is it more like the autoload function in my acaddoc.lsp file thusly: (autoload "FILENAME" '("COMMAND1" "COMMAND2"))

If I had to guess ... it's more like the acaddoc.lsp. The BIG drawback to using this method is the fact that you cannot load .vlx or .fas files, ONLY .lsp which makes no sense to me. What I do is load one .lsp file that loads every .lsp, .fas or .vlx I have in a directory. So if I want to add a program I just drop it in that directory and it gets loaded the next time I open a dwg.

It looks like this:

Code: [Select]

(defun load-lsp ()
  (foreach file (vl-directory-files "C:/acad_apps/" "*.lsp" 1)
           (load file (strcat file " did not load"))
           )
  )

(load-lsp)


[Birdy]

Thanks Mark

[Arizona]

What I do is load one .lsp file that loads every .lsp, .fas or .vlx I have in a directory. So if I want to add a program I just drop it in that directory and it gets loaded the next time I open a dwg.

It looks like this:

Code: [Select]

(defun load-lsp ()
  (foreach file (vl-directory-files "C:/acad_apps/" "*.lsp" 1)
           (load file (strcat file " did not load"))
           )
  )

(load-lsp)


TCO,
What Mark has suggested will work for you also.
The vba programs are self loading and simply need to be in the search path
The lisp programs are coming from multiple locations (I don't remember if the paths are hard coded, so check that)