Shared menus on network

[jpaulsen]

Does anyone put menus on the network to be shared by all users?
What issues will I run into?
What permissions should be set on the shared menu folder?

I recently implemented Land Desktop 2005. I have copied the following menus to a network folder; acad, acmap, acetmain (express), aecco (raster design), land, civil and survey.

I am having intermittent problems where the land, civil and/or survey menus will not load. I try to load them from the network folder using menuload and they just don't load. I can load them from the local drive. As I mentioned this is intermittent and only on certain computers (so far).

I added write permissions to the folder for all users and this seems to help but I haven't tested it thoroughly yet.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance,

[Mike.Perry]

Hi


Does anyone put menus on the network to be shared by all users?

Yes, all Menu files + Support files used by/with the Menu files


What issues will I run into?

Hopefully none.


What permissions should be set on the shared menu folder?

Access / Read


Personally I wouldn't give all Users "Write" permission to that folder.

Why?

What happens if / when a User, say does some Toolbar customization? (though AutoCAD 2005 has introduced system variable TBCUSTOMIZE that can be used to help with that issue).

Here all Users are given a Menu file Custom.mnu (this is stored on the Network in their own private area) and are shown how to use this file as a Partial Menu. Most only use this file for their Toolbar customization, but by giving everyone this freedom / option helps keep a happy medium between locking everything down (can be too restrictive) or having a total free-for-all (total nightmare to manage).

Have a good one, Mike

[jpaulsen]

We have a similar setup here with a user.mnu that is stored on each employee's user drive. The user drive is on the network but each employee has their own.

If yours is working with menus in a read-only folder I don't see any reason why it wouldn't work for me. Are you using Land Desktop?

One thing that I thought might have caused a problem is the fact that when you load one file it creates or updates another. For example, when the mns is loaded it creates the mnc or updates the mnc if it is out of date. Is this correct?

I may not have had all the files in sync when I copied them to the server. When a user tried loading the mns it is possible that it was trying to create/update an mnc or mnr.

I need to do some more research to determine how this works and when the mnr is updated or created. Unfortunately I'm already late to leave the office so this will have to wait until Friday. I will post an update then.

[Mike.Perry]

Hi


If yours is working with menus in a read-only folder I don't see any reason why it wouldn't work for me. Are you using Land Desktop?
No.



One thing that I thought might have caused a problem is the fact that when you load one file it creates or updates another. For example, when the mns is loaded it creates the mnc or updates the mnc if it is out of date. Is this correct?
A User shouldn't have a need to load a .MNS file (apart from their own Custom or User .MNS file), loading a .MNC file is what their should be loading if they need to load a menu file from your "safe" Network folder.



I may not have had all the files in sync when I copied them to the server. When a user tried loading the mns it is possible that it was trying to create/update an mnc or mnr.
Correct, loading a .MNS file will force an update (rewrite) of the .MNC file, for a better explanation refer to the AutoCAD Online Help File [F1] -

Contents tab -> Customization Guide -> The Menu File -> Load and Unload Menu Files

Have a good one, Mike

[jpaulsen]

I have it working now. It seems the problem was that the MNS, MNC and MNR files were out of sync when I copied them to the network drive. AutoCAD was trying to modify either the MNC or MNR when the MNS was being loaded.

I loaded each menu's MNS file while I had write permissions to allow AutoCAD to update the MNC and MNR files for each menu. I then copied those files (MNS, MNC and MNR) to the network drive. I set the network drive back to read-only (woohoo) and everything works.

Thanks for everyone's input.

Jeff

[richard.binning]

I have it working now. It seems the problem was that the MNS, MNC and MNR files were out of sync when I copied them to the network drive. AutoCAD was trying to modify either the MNC or MNR when the MNS was being loaded.

I loaded each menu's MNS file while I had write permissions to allow AutoCAD to update the MNC and MNR files for each menu. I then copied those files (MNS, MNC and MNR) to the network drive. I set the network drive back to read-only (woohoo) and everything works.

Thanks for everyone's input.

Jeff
The benefit of a "custom" menu file over a "user" menu file is that in 2005 products, the "custom" menu is loaded by AutoCAD automatically if it is found in the users search path. That and the addition of a custom.mnl to go with and load all lisp routines found in it is a powerful combination.

RLB

[jpaulsen]

I agree the custom menu is a great idea for those who do not have anything else. We have been using this user menu for 5+ years. The user menu and the company menu loads automatically every time you open AutoCAD.

The advantage of the user menu is that it is stored on the network, not the local drive. It gets backed up and is available to you no matter what computer you logon.