damnit mdub go have a cigarette oh i'm sorry the evil word uhhh mark i don't really want what the acad.mnu offers i would like to customize it and use the mns but can i. well if i had an mns i could figure that out. seriously ummm well the mns references the mnu right but do you have to have the mnu loaded or can you just load the mns. it says mnu is a template file and mns a source file that refers to the mnu as i understand it so i would say no
dan
Oboy, a place I can throw in to muddy-up the waters... kewl!
I use R2002 and don't know if R2004 changes things, but here's my experience as it relates to R2002:
The MNS is created when you load the MNU, as are the MNC and MNR. From that point on editting the menu fram ACAD changes the MNS. Those changes are NOT reflected in the MNU. I use the MNU as sort of a backup, once the MNS is running well, I copy the MNS over the MNU.
The "Smiley Face" delimma is solved by placing the icon BMP's created by editting button faces in the same directory as the MNS. Or creating a specific directory for those BMP's and adding that directory to the search path.
My process is this:
I load the ACAD.MNS, then MENULOAD any custom menus (mine, express, clients, whatever). The only stuff in my custom menu is my custom toolbars and pulldowns.
To create those, I copy-n-paste the similar toolbar out of ACAD.mns into PERSONAL.MNS and MENULOAD that into the current session.
Making sure that it is the menu current in the customize dialog box, I can click-drag-copy buttons from any open toolbar into the new one. Or edit the buttons currently displayed on that bar. Or insert new buttons and flyouts.
The PERSONAL.MNS can also be editted by any plain text editor (NOTEPAD, WORDPAD, EDLIN, whatever). But you then have to re-MENULOAD the MNS file to recompile the MNC & MNR files. If you're editting the menu through an ACAD session, the MNR & MNC files are atomatically created.
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A note on MNL: The MNL is a lisp routine that loads with the MNC. When a menu is loaded, ACAD looks araound for an MNL of the same name. IF it finds one it loads it like a lisp routine. Real handy for loading menu specific functions.
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Are the waters muddy enough yet??