Where does autocad store the location of CUIs to load?

[Jordan Truesdell]

It has to be somewhere, right? Maybe even human readable?

Here's the issue: I installed ADT a couple of months ago, but am still using a different version of ACAD, installed in a different location - totally separate.

Since the install, I have moved where I'm storing my data from F:/blahblahblah to K:/blahblahblah. F: no longer exists.

Well, I fired up ADT, hoping to start doing some work there and getting acclimated to the new system, and *surprise* the initial load told me that acad.CUI didn't exist in F:/blahblahblah.

So I had ACAD with no menus. Nothing. I typed in OPTIONS and changed all instances of F: (there were very few) to K:. Exit and reload. The CUIs still weren't in F:/ (yeah, I knew that).

So where do I have to go to tell ADT that all of the stuff its looking for is in K:? FWIW, the program is installed locally, stand alone, on C, and all of the support files (or whatever ADT calls them) are in a single directory on K.

Aside: I typed CUI at the command line and loaded the acad.CUI from the right place, but I haven't the faintest clue where that data is stored, and how I can edit it so that I can make changes in the future. Also, none of the .mdb stuff (detail component manager, for example) is accessible - it thinks its still on F:. Heck, the DCM isn't even an option in the insert menu at this point. Maybe my question should have been: how to I repath everything in Autocad?

[Opie]

Have you looked in your Options dialog box under Files? I don't use ADT, so I can't help too much. Just a thought.

[Jordan Truesdell]

I think you said that just to make me look. Of course, options are under Tools, and yes, I looked there.

Okay, just because I looked, I noticed that there are more tabs in ADT Tools|Options than there were in Acad regular. AECcontent and AECProjectDefaults are tacked onto the end, and have some paths in there. I hadn't noticed, except I considered looking at where the profiles were stored in order to see if the profile files were readable (I think they're just registry files, right?)

Maybe that's what I was really looking for - the profiles so that I could do a bulk find/replace on the drive letter. If it works, I'll be very happy (but still frustrated that there is yet another place AutoDesk has found to hide configuration data...why not add the AEC locations under Tools|Options|Files, like everything else?)

[Jordan Truesdell]

See, now I reread your post and realized that what you said was backwards from how I read it. Options under Files (ie Files|Options...you know, how Windows does it) is different from the Files tabs in the Options dialog box. Too many freakin' layers of stuff, if you ask me ;-)

It's official, I want to go back to .ini files, thankyouverymuch.

[jaberwok]

Have you tried looking in C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Autodesk\AutoCAD 2006\R16.2\enu\Support ?
That's where most of the user related info is kept now.

[Jordan Truesdell]

Yeah, I looked there first. Nothing of use.

Whoops...there's nothing there because I looked in C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Application Data\Autodesk\AutoCAD 2006\R16.2\enu\

So close and yet so far.

Still, is there any way to know if anything at all actually loads from C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Autodesk\AutoCAD 2006\R16.2\enu\Support? I mean, there are a lot of files there, but nothing was loading - it was looking in the (now defunct) F:

I've been through the entire manual (well, two, actually) that comes with ADT, plus an aftermarket book on ADT (Paul Aubin's), and I have yet to see a short section on "This is how AutoCAD loads". Maybe I'm too used to doing things myself, and AutoCAD is just trying to help too much. If it tries to help me any more, I may never get any work done.

I went back to the back issues of AUGIworld and I think I found my answer - the CUI is called out in the Customization line of the Files tab in the Tools|Options dialog box, but it is blank by default, so I wouldn't have noticed it. (just checked - Adobe Acrobat has kindly inserted itself as the main CUI...that program is like a weed!)

As for the profiles, apparently there are two different types of profiles, and .aws and an .arg. The latter is the registry key version I was hoping to find. ADT seems to use the .aws style. That's what's in the /support/profiles directory, and it looks to have nothing of use for pathing. Another dead end.

I'm going to bail for now. I'm hoping to get most of my asnwers tomorrow at CAD camp in the CUI session. I feel sorry for whomever is the CUI instructor ;-)

[jpaulsen]

I use LDT but since ADT and LDT are both built on AutoCAD I hope the setup is similar.

To check the CUI location you have to go to the Files tab in Options and expand Customization Files.

The CUIs are in XML format now so they are not as "human readable" as the old MNU files were. I would recommend making any changes through the CUI interface. There is a search and replace function in the CUI.

[Jordan Truesdell]

I found the files. The problem was that there was nothing in there - it was gone (except for adobe).

1. The answer to "where should they exist" is in this area - Tools|Options; Files tab; Customization tree.

2. The answer to "where should they exist if you haven't changed their location" is:C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Autodesk\AutoCAD 2006\R16.2\enu\Support

3. The answer to "where should you go if you've completely borked your CUI and just want to get back to vanilla" is: C:/program files/AutoCAD 2006/UserDataCache/Support/acad.cui

If you've hosed you're installation beyond apparent repair (and have backed up, just incase you didn't screw it up, but thought you did), copy the file in 3 to the location in 2 and set the "path" to the customization file location in 1 to the value in 2. That last part is a bit goofy, so once you get the acad.cui from part 3, look at the options dialog box I've attached.

[jaberwok]

Thanks for the info. I'm sure it'll come in handy. :shock: