Displaying a menu in a menu

Here is my problem. I am trying to make a menu for my company. We have three departments which all use there own stuff. But the stuff we share I don't want to copy 3 times into each pull down. I would like to have a general section on top of each pull down and then the tools for each department under that. something like this

***POP1
**General
[General]
[BLAH]
[BLAH]

**MENU1
[MENU!]
(here would display the general stuff)
[--]
[Tools]
[Blocks]
[Layers]

 

Create a separate menu file for each department, then use the menuload
command to specifically load menus per computer.

See -
http://www.markcad.com/autocad/acadtoolbars.htm
http://www.caddigest.com/subjects/autocad/tutorials/select/index.htm
for more info on "how to menus"

 

Something like this might work.

;; Menuload.lsp (fragment)
;;
(setq local_drive "C:"); Local or Network Drive Letter + :
;;
(if (findfile (strcat local_drive "/menus/dept1.mns"))
(progn
(if (= (menugroup "DEPT1") nil)
(progn
(command "_MENULOAD" (strcat local_drive "/menus/dept1"))
(menucmd "P10=+DEPT1.POP1")
); end progn
); end if
); end progn
); end if
(if (findfile (strcat local_drive "/menus/dept2.mns"))
(progn
(if (= (menugroup "DEPT2") nil)
(progn
(command "_MENULOAD" (strcat local_drive "/menus/dept2"))
(menucmd "P10=+DEPT2.POP1")
); end progn
); end if
); end progn
); end if
;;
;; - next menu to check for..
(princ)

---------------------
Menus:
Dept1.mns
***MENUGROUP=DEPT1
***POP1
[BLAH]
[BLAH]

Dept2.mns
***MENUGROUP=DEPT2
***POP1
[BLAH]
[BLAH]

 

We have two different groups, needing different commands in one of our
pulldown menus.

To reduce maintenance & coordination I wanted to share the same menu between
groups, so I figured out how to use DIESEL expressions in the menu. There's
a "check" item at the top of the menu which indicates which group's version
is active. Top change it, you just check the other -- which runs a lisp
routine to set the value of useri1 accordingly (thereby storing the setting
in the drawing) and reload our other lisps, because some of them run
differently depending on the value of useri1.

Then depending on which group's menu version is active, DIESEL expressions
are used to gray out options which aren't available. For instance

[$(if,$(=,$(getvar,useri1),0),~)&Revision Date]^C^C^PREVDATE;

One group uses a revision date stamp while the other doesn't.