Making Custom Buttons Permanant

OK, I'm full of q's today. Does anyone know how to keep a custom button and custom toolbar even after loading a different menu, then going back to the original menu?

 

It sounds like you are loading the mnu file which overwrites any changes.
You should use the mns file instead.
Better yet you should put your custom menus in a separate custom menu file
and menuload it.

 

When loading a menu (.mnu, .mns file), AutoCAD compiles the code and saves a menuname.mnc (compiled version), and a menuname.mnr (menu resource) file. - for each menu loaded.
The 'toolbar' section of a given menu determines 'which' toolbars are available, and IF you place them on the screen, visible, then when you 'exit' - AutoCAD rewrites the menuname.mnr file. Therefore, IF you want a particular toolbar to remain (on screen) when you switch (menu) files, you need to place a 'copy' of the toolbar section in (each) menu source file (.mns). Once this is done, menuload the (2) menus, and the toolbar should be available to (both) menus.
You cannot (however) 'share' just the toolbars from one menu to another - they must be (loaded) when you reload the new menu. I hope this is clear.

Bob

 

You can have a "base" menu, which is loaded through the MENU command, and as
many "partial" menus as you want, which are loaded through the MENULOAD
command.

Why are you changing menus? If each menu does different things, I would be
inclined to treat all of them as partial menus which are loaded in addition
to the base Acad menu. You could use MENULOAD to load or unload them as
needed. If there is a particular personal toolbar you always want, then I'd
make that a separate partial menu and leave it loaded all the time.

The only time that all menus get unloaded at once is when you use MENU to
designate a different base menu. I'd recommend deciding on a base menu, even
if it's a minimal or empty menu, make it your base menu with MENU, and leave
it alone. Then use MENULOAD exclusively for loading and unloading additional
menus. If you use MENULOAD to unload a menu, it doesn't affect anything but
that specific menu.

 

I simply create different 'profiles' for the different configurations I
need. ie Structural, Architectural, Panels etc.
Each profile has the correct menus, tools, layers etc which can be
associated with a unique icon on the desktop.
I use 5 different configs, ie 5 icons loading 5 different profiles.

regards
Rob.

 

2 things that I can think of to watch out for are one as stated use the
MENULOAD cmd to partial load the menu but do not pick the .MNU file or it
will loose all the other menus through its recompilation process and two
when I have a project that takes a different then normal menu I will make a
profile for that configuration and then have that configuration always load
menus a, b and c while another may load a, b and d then you can create a
shortcut with this as your target

"C:\Program Files\ACAD2000\acad.exe" /p database

In this example to profile it would pull up is my database profile which has
all my custom lisps and menus associated with our DWG database so I do not
have to always load and reload menus to make certain things functional.
--
Stewart

and custom toolbar even after loading a different menu, then going back to
the original menu?

 

thanks. that's a great idea.