Notes on the philosophy of CUI

[rkmcswain]

Has anyone given any thought to how this system may apply to:

Civil3D

with these additional menus.

RasterDesign
Custom
Company

[jpaulsen]

I just finished setting up C3D 2007. It works the same way as LDT but with different CUI files. Here is my CUI setup for C3D:

Main:
User (custom)

Enterprise:
Civil
|--Acad
|--JR (company)
|--Express
|--Rasterdesign

I only set it up yesterday and have not used it much but it seems to be working fine.

[rkmcswain]

I just finished setting up C3D 2007. It works the same way as LDT but with different CUI files. Here is my CUI setup for C3D:

Main:
User (custom)

Enterprise:
Civil
|--Acad
|--JR (company)
|--Express
|--Rasterdesign

I only set it up yesterday and have not used it much but it seems to be working fine.

Tried the same thing, but:

A) You cannot add partials to the Enterprise menu (you have to make the Enterprise the Main, add the partials, then set it back to the Enterprise....)
B) I get "?" icons all over the place (this is a bone-stock install of C3D)

I gave up and went back to the stock menu.

Has anyone considered setting up a "CUSTOM" profile (with CUSTOM.CUI only) for the users and tell them to switch to that profile before making menu changes?

Regarding "A" - even Autodesk wouldn't design something that idiotic on purpose.

I still say the whole CUI thing is a joke. The idea may have merit, but the execution was done very poorly. It has not helped us one bit, and has actually made things worse.

[jpaulsen]

Yes. You have to set the Civil CUI as your main to make a change to it.

I started with the Civil CUI set as my main (default setting during install). Added in all the partials I desired and created a Company workspace so employees would have a good starting point.

I then copied that civil.cui, civil.dll, civil.mnl and civil.mnr from my local drive to a network folder. I set the Enterprise path to that network folder and added that path as the first entry in the AutoCAD search path.

I have had no problems with ? icons. I have a similar setup for LDT 2006 and 2007 and have had no problems there either.

[rkmcswain]

I then copied that civil.cui, civil.dll, civil.mnl and civil.mnr from my local drive to a network folder. I set the Enterprise path to that network folder and added that path as the first entry in the AutoCAD search path.

What is the purpose of that, just to keep users from messing up their local copy?

If it's a partial to the enterprise, wouldn't they have to go to a lot of trouble to do that?

[jpaulsen]

I put them on the network so I don't have to copy the modified CUI to all the workstations. I put them in a read-only folder so users don't mess them up.

[rkmcswain]

I put them on the network so I don't have to copy the modified CUI to all the workstations. I put them in a read-only folder so users don't mess them up.

Why would any of those files [civil.cui, civil.dll, civil.mnl and civil.mnr] be modified? And if you are modifying them, what do you do when a SP is released or when you upgrade, manually migrate these modifications to the new file each time?

[jpaulsen]

Actually I did not modify my Civil 3D menu...yet.

However, I do make modifications to the acmap.cui and land cui in LDT. The changes take about 20 minutes to make so it is not a big problem when we upgrade. Plus I only do it once and put them on the network.

In the acmap.cui I change all instances of New to Qnew and all instances of Qleader to Leader. In the Land.cui I do a search and replace to add a command to set the UCS to world before executing the LDT command.

[kewlvigilante]

I'm going through an arduous implementation process. I took on a CAD management position which I do enjoy a great deal. But it is very hard to get useful feedback on things at times. I am Supporting Production, IT, & Development. I'm curious what other managers might have to say about the management of networked cui's. Reading through this post has brought up quite a few items I've already found or figured out on my own. I want to streamline things as much as possible for management purposes but the biggest problem comes up in trying to keep things predictable for my users. 70% of implementation success is ease of use in generating user ownership.

As a management tool I find the CUI fairly horrid to downright reverse productivity in functionality. I reject its use 80% of the time opting for TextPad. (Which by the way has line #'s for code for free why doesn't the VLIDE?) This is about as polite as I can possibly be with regards towards its 2006 & 2007 implementation. Every new item created is stuck in the main cui file rather than to the file I need it to be in which I find ridiculously non productive. Any change gets implemented automatically instead of when I choose to apply the change and this slows progress so badly I lose track of what I was doing in the first place. There is 0 management use to changing multiple file path values.

My hurdles:
48 licenses of 2004
20 licenses of 2006
Legacy project format specific files & routines
New National CAD Standard (NCS) formatting for all files & routines

I employed Profiles with shortcuts mapped to these default profiles.
Switching profiles manually is non-productive because AutoCAD needs to be shut down and restarted to complete the process. It only goes to 90% looking stable only to slap the user corrupting the local machine files during use.
Boot directly from the profile in the shortcut is the best way.
I maintained and implemented a folder in everyones personal drive for the default profiles for which I currently maintain 4 distinct profiles due to the 2 pairs of differences above.

There were 4 distinct parent directories containing some 20,000 files & child folders apiece.
Each parent being half finished formats of changes and implementations with rather illiterate replications due to the change of hands and total lack of documentation to inherit from my predecessors.
By the end of July I am getting all licenses on subscription so I am trying to do a major overhaul to this mess.
So far I have managed to get it down to a single development parent directory with just under 12,000 files & child folders required to maintain operations in place. This is only the custom enterprise interface of details, schedules, cover sheets, tool bars, & (recently implemented by me) networked palettes, fonts, plot styles, plotters, drivers, etc...

Using networked menu customizations I've implemented a variety of approaches.
Personal custom toolbars on a mapped personal drive in the network. ( 1 cui file )
Enterprise menu files for each discipline (12 seperate cui files )
Workspace basic suggested discipline layout files ( 8 seperate cui files )

Networked menu's seem to generate many hurdles.
Network stability issues result in loss of menu's and configuration.
I've written lisp routines to restore the menu's on demand but even these shortcuts get lost when the network belches and manual appload results 70% of the time due to half loaded pgp files.
Automating the menuloads has been fairly nonproductive resulting in heavy network traffic and creating more errors due to the load demands and slow response times.
I've written the code to restore them directly in the acad.lsp and it still fails to load the lisp files properly with the slightest hiccup and the menu's load haphazzardly with some functions present but not 100%.

I've considered making the systems local installations on every workstation but this presents update problems as well. In this day and age it is lucky if you can get someone to read more than 3 lines of an email to make the update let alone comprehend any of what they read. Information Age and information overload makes us all a bit of a zombie at times =P
Also I question whether I'm still running into the same problem attempting automatic updates on an internal domain. How are you folks managing this?

Best regards,
~Chris

[jpaulsen]

Hi Chris,

If you read through my other posts in this thread you will see how I have my system configured.

I am supporting ~100 users in four offices but everyone uses the same configuration so my situation is a little less complicated than yours.

I know you can modify the CUI files with a text editor but not knowing XML at all I have shied away from doing it. I have found that using the CUI editor I can make any changes that I need. You do have to change the desired CUI to the Main when you make changes but that only takes 30 seconds to do it manually and it can be automated with lisp. I am wondering if some of your problems may be associated with modifying the CUIs directly.

I assume you are using profiles to change search and other paths in the preferences. If you do not need to change path preferences you should look at workspaces. I have never used profiles to configure workstations; instead I use VBA to set the paths. I can't help you much here because of my lack of experience using profiles. But I do agree that using a shortcut to start AutoCAD with the desired profile is the best approach.

We run all customization from the network: CUI, LSP, VBA, PC3, CTB, symbol blocks, tool palettes, templates, sample sheet sets, etc. We have not noticed any stability or lag issues with the network. I can only assume that you are experiencing network issues, not AutoCAD or CUI issues.