AutoCAD 2006 and menu files

[fletch97]

So is it me or is Autodesk trying to make it harder for us to customize CAD from the outside? (Menus, scripts, lisp, etc...)

I have a highly customized environment with pull down menus, tool bars, layer setup's, etc... All of which is located on the server with read access granted to all users. With that said, I have successfully gotten all my custom stuff to load properly in 2006 on my PC even with the addition of this cui file. However, when I try to load the custom stuff on another pc with read writes, it won't do it. It says that they need write access to the cui file??? I can't open access to that, it would compromise all of the standards.......there has to be a way around this, please help!!!

Steve

[Mike.Perry]

Hi Steve

Please note I've *moved* this thread from the CAD Mgmt. General (http://forums.augi.com/forumdisplay.php?f=119) Forum to this one as I feel this particular Forum is a more appropriate place for such a topic.

Thanks, Mike

Forum Moderator

[timfrost]

I am having trouble with a digitizer. You said you got everything working. Did you get a 16 button digitzer to work?

Tim

[fletch97]

Well let me take that back........I thought I had it working but it's just been so buggy in 2006. I am not happy with Autodesk and the fact that they want us to use this ridiculous graphic interface to customize Autocad.

But to answer your question.....No, I haven't seen or used a digitizer in sometime. Everyone scans in their drawings and essentially digitizes over the raster image in CAD these days. So I have no idea how to get it to work....what kind of problems are you having with it?

[wreedy]

I too have had real problems trying to get the old 16 button digitizer to work. I can get some of the tablet menus under the Legacy sub menu to work, but they certainly don't convert over without any problems, The commands drop over OK for the tablet menus, but each of our 4 tablet menus will only hold 25 columns, and we run ours with 28 columns!!!, and it just moves the remaining 3 over to the next column. It looks like i will have to manually drop every single command in for the hundreds of commands and lisp files that we have for the digitizer. BUT....the real problem is with assigning the button commands, i cant get the control click commands to save at all, you can drop them in there, but when you re-open the CUI file they DONT save. VERY ANNOYING. PS has anyone had problems with windows XP service pack two effecting the tablet drivers?

[bobby.41130]

I just installed ADT 06. I'm using a Summasketch III. My reseller tells me I'm the last of their customers to still use one. I got the 16 button cursor to work great, I even figured out how to weasel my tablet menus into the CUI. However, it was of no use. The mapping still works fine, but none of the macros defined on my tablet menus work. When I click one of these macros, it's as if I'm not even using a digitizer. Nothing happens.

As for the tablet driver problems, it's a calcomp thing. I am one of the poor souls using the summasketch III on Windows XP home/SP2. There was some kind of law suit alleging copyright infringement or something so they had to strip the newest driver of the mapping functionality. I'm using the previous version that I was fortunate enough to download and archive before all the drama. I still have to use a workaround to get the mapping to work. When I first start my PC in the morning, the mapping doesn't work. I have to use the 2 button to right click on MY COMPUTER from the desktop, select MANAGE, expand the SERVICES AND APPLICATIONS option in the left window, click on SERVICES under that, then scroll to WINTAB 32 in the right side window and right click on it, and then choose RESTART. What a pain. I wish they'd get that resolved.

If anybody can tell me a better way to do all this, I'd greatly appreciate it.

I just ran a spell check, does it seem odd to anyone else that this type of forum doesn't have calcomp, summasketch, or some other industry specific terms?

[Ferroequine]

Well let me take that back........I thought I had it working but it's just been so buggy in 2006. I am not happy with Autodesk and the fact that they want us to use this ridiculous graphic interface to customize Autocad.
I share your frustration. This is going to be a gigantic step backwards in productivity in maintaining my Co.'s libraries.

Just what was wrong with a little text based code?

[ldavis.23383]

I've used a 16 mouse for 14 years, and now I'm told it's obsolete. How can Autodesk just decide that we don't need to use digitizers anymore. The customizations we've made to our menus over the year is now junk. What a slap in the face.

The CUI looks like a wonderful thing but it's no good to me if i can't make it work. My support person called technical support to find out why my buttons didn't work anymore and was told that Autodesk doesn't support digitizers anymore that they needed to buy a mouse.

Thanks a Lot Autodesk
Jake the dinosaur

PS
GPOPE if you see this, i saw on another message that you use a 16 Button Mouse. You seem to be very knowledgeable let us know if you've had these problems with 2006 please.

[Glenn Pope]

PS
GPOPE if you see this, i saw on another message that you use a 16 Button Mouse. You seem to be very knowledgeable let us know if you've had these problems with 2006 please.
I haven't tried using the way your suppose to setup a digitizer that you guys are having problems with. I have dual monitors and telling AutoCAD that i use a digitizer restricted me to one monitor. So I had to change to using keyboard combinations and assigning them to the buttons using the digitizer driver. So far this has worked for me, but I saw in one of your post that you wanted to assign more then one command to a button. Unfortunately you can't do that with this method. I'll look into it some more when I get the chance.

[miket.105952]

Jake, I share your pain. I've used 10 button or 16 button digitizers since '85, and I've little use for an "improvement" that requires a lot of motion and three to five mouse clicks to replace my one digitizer button. CUI works, it's just really buggy. I made mine work with persistence and by recognizing that if I drag and drop, I get crashes. I manually input all button combinations, saving the file after each one. When I got a CUI file error, I'd delete that file and copy the last one that worked. Took hours, but now almost everything works. The only thing is that doesn't work are the last two menus, CONTROL & CONTROL-SHIFT. Autodesk says that's a design flaw and they'll be sure to get 2007 out as quickly as possible. Gotta love that brass. Yeah, we screwed up, wait a year and give us another $500, and maybe then it'll work. We'll be looking very closely at alternate software before we buy any more Autodesk products.

MW


I've used a 16 mouse for 14 years, and now I'm told it's obsolete. How can Autodesk just decide that we don't need to use digitizers anymore. The customizations we've made to our menus over the year is now junk. What a slap in the face.

The CUI looks like a wonderful thing but it's no good to me if i can't make it work. My support person called technical support to find out why my buttons didn't work anymore and was told that Autodesk doesn't support digitizers anymore that they needed to buy a mouse.

Thanks a Lot Autodesk
Jake the dinosaur

PS
GPOPE if you see this, i saw on another message that you use a 16 Button Mouse. You seem to be very knowledgeable let us know if you've had these problems with 2006 please.

[sinc]

I share your frustration. This is going to be a gigantic step backwards in productivity in maintaining my Co.'s libraries.

Just what was wrong with a little text based code?
ACK!

Relax a little bit, and give it a chance! ;)

Customization before was a huge pain. Everything was spread out all over the place. It required manual editing of multiple files in multiple locations and everything. It was a convoluted, unadulterated mess.

The CUI is puts a whole bunch of the customization all in one place. It's "yet another new thing to learn", and the UI is buggy and jumpy in this first version, but it is a major step in the right direction. Autodesk's standard "Wait until next year's version, and maybe we'll fix the bugs" is annoying, but isn't that business as usual with Autodesk?

Don't despair! It is now very, very easy to move customizations from one computer to another, once you get the hang of it. There may be some transition pains in this version, but hopefully(!) the next version will fix much of that. All in all, this is a move Autodesk needed to do years ago.

[Ferroequine]

Don't despair! It is now very, very easy to move customizations from one computer to another, once you get the hang of it. There may be some transition pains in this version, but hopefully(!) the next version will fix much of that. All in all, this is a move Autodesk needed to do years ago.I will partially agree with you. However, things are different when the users use the menus from a central location only; I have no need to move customizations and menus from one computer to the next, because everything is centrally administered and standardized.

The way that the pull-down and image libraries have been handled is poor at best. What I could accomplish in 10 minutes of code edits using a good editor (not notepad ;) ) in the MNS file will now take up to an hour, due to the extremely clunky and graphical nature of the interface.

I'm sure looking forward to see what 2007 has to offer. :beer:

[RobertB]

I'm sure looking forward to see what 2007 has to offer. :beer:More of the same. Get used to the CUI editor.