Tool bar button bitmaps

R2205:

Is there a default location where the bitmaps get saved when you hit the save button in the toolbar button editor?

I seem to have bitmaps turning up in couple of different folders on a network system of 6 work stations.

What's the best way to manage these?

TIA

Bill

 

Place them inside a .dll of the same name as the menu file.

Grab Resource Hacker
http://mysite.verizon.net/~vze2vjds/free.htm

 

Thanks

Where do you keep the .dll?

That link is not working for resourse hacker.

Bill

 

The DLL would be kept in one of the search paths for AutoCAD.

I've posted a copy of ResHacker in the CF NG.

 

Try here

http://www.afralisp.com/vbaa/vbadll.htm

 

I have used a dll file and resourse hacker for 4 years mow, works great.
even for autocad 2005 windows 2000

Gary

 

Hi Matt,

With our commercial installations I put the menu DLLs in the same directory
as the MNU file.
AutoCAD creates the MNS, MNR and MNC files in that directory.
I do not need to put this directory on the AutoCAD search path.

As these installations are running on hundreds of computers in hundreds of
independent offices, if it created a problem, I'd soon hear about it.
--


Laurie Comerford
CADApps
www.cadapps.com.au

 

Bill, I'm not running 2005 yet, but on all previous versions the default save folder has seemed squirrely. I'd guess that it defaults to the start-in folder, whatever that is. Seems random to me & I've never tried to figure out what's happening. When I use this feature, I have to go search to find where Acad threw the BMP.

 

That's the biggest problem.

Everytime a user opens their AutoCAD each day and see that one of their bitmaps is wrong, they go to the button editor and open the one they want and then they have to hit the save button to go out of the editor, so they can hit apply. Well it seems everytime they hit save, another ICONXXXX.bmp gets created in one or the other of our support folders instead of the folder I created for them.

How do I know which bmp each button is reading from after they do this?

Bill

 

How do I know which bmp each button is reading from after they do this?

Bill, I don't know, except by looking in the mns. The filenames are
generated randomly, and they get thrown into (I think) the start-in folder,
which might be just about anywhere, depending on how Acad was started.

Sounds like the larger question is, why are the icons changing? I never see
that happen. And if it did, the user should be able to pick from the
available icons on the right side of the Customize dialog, without going
into the icon editor. I think this will change the button without generating
a new BMP file. My users would just call me if they saw something as
irregular as this happening, they wouldn't try hacking it themselves.

I'd guess that by poking filenames willy-nilly and saving them, the users
have created a completely disorderly mess of BMP's and menus, scattered all
over creation, and they may see a different MNR file in each session
depending on what folder happens to be current.

Is the menu local or shared? Either way, I think you need to collect and
save the "real" images, save an officially sanctioned version of the office
menu (with matching BMP file names), perform a wholesale delete of every BMP
and MN* you can find, reissue a menu that works properly, and start those
folks over again in a clean environment. Maybe putting all the allowable
images in a DLL is a good thing, I don't know, I've never fooled with that.

 

Hi,
meeting the same problem I renamed each bmps with their respective names (from these "ICONxxxx.bmp" names), so that I knew which name belongs to which icon (e.g. "din_form.bmp", "pruf.bmp", etc.)
then I edited our mnu and mns files, changing the links of these icon-bmps, adding full path and new filename in these menufiles.
these all are in the same network-folder.
since then we have only seen the correct bitmaps, not that silly yellow smiling face.

 

Sounds like the larger question is, why are the icons changing? I never see
that happen.<<<

I have had R2205 for a while now and have not had any bitmap icons change.

I have recently upgraded 5 more workstations and only one user seems to ge having trouble, but only with a couple of buttons.

We are incouraged here to stroke each individuals creativeness and they are encouraged to continually find better ways to do their work (and you think you're having fun).

So what I did here was create a unique username.mns for each user.
I did this by taking the standard acad.mnu and migrating a couple of toolbars from the old R14 into it.
(Almost every user here does something different so there were a few custom tool bars that they wanted to come over from R14.)

Being we have two shifts here, I thought this would be the best way, so if one of the night shift logged on to one of the work stations, and any customizing was done to any tool bars, it would not change any of the other users interface.

When I installed each station, I had a lisp in my acad.mnl that set the support and printer paths, checked loginname and loaded the users .mns and then made sure that the users profile was created and/or set current then saved the profile to user.arg.

I save the profile daily so we can restore the profile if some unforeseen occurance happens during the shift.

Seems to work well except that I see these ICONXXXX.bmp appearing in the usermenu folder everyday. Not the end of the world but am looking into it here.

Thanks for any help.

Bill

 

Bill, I do a similar thing in a different way (in 2004). Everybody has the
standard Acad menu unaltered, the Express Tools partial, plus a
company-standard partial menu, plus a partial "user menu." They can do
anything they want in the user menu, but they're wasting their time if they
fiddle with the company menu, because their changes will be wiped out next
time I update it. Over the long haul, maybe 1/4 of our users have had any
interest in tweaking their menu at all, and maybe 1/4 of those have done
anything more than make a button or two.

The main reason for the user menu isn't for them to create buttons out of
the blue, it's to let them assemble toolbars that suit their preferences a
bit more, by copying buttons from the other menus' toolbars. That way they
can have the assortment of buttons they want, without altering (for
instance) the Acad menu. But in practice this hasn't seen much utilization.
Only a very small percentage of our users have been "button monkeys." Most
of them are keyboard oriented.

I would focus on what in the world that one user is doing, and start with
the cleanout process I mentioned on his machine. What usually happens with
icon glitches is that the user actually made a (bad) change to the menu, but
didn't see the change until restarting Acad. When they say their icon
changed today, they're really saying they messed it up yesterday. If they're
gonna do this, they should be taught to exit Acad after any toolbar change,
delete the MNC and MNR, and restart Acad in order to see what they *really*
just did. Perhaps then they'll see a pattern in what they're doing wrong.

IMHO, if they're going to program menus, sorry, but they really need to
learn to do it correctly, by naming the BMP themselves, placing it in the
correct folder, manually editing the MNS, the whole 9 yards. There shouldn't
be any ICONXXXX.bmp's anywhere in the picture. My bet is still that the
troubled user has multiple copies of two badly named BMP files in various
locations, and keeps flipping around among them.

 

Thanks Tom,

I think of our earlier discussion about the read only folders and the partial menus. I guess that didn't work out here.
I'm not a wizard at this stuff and it may be years before I'll have to do it again.. but I'm a bargain for what I charge. 8')

I think what's happening is the one user selected a bitmap from the directory, then hit the save button in the editor. What that apparently does is create another ICONXXXX.bmp in whatever directory the menu sees fit, then the .mns uses that one. It worked that way in R14 anyway and I don't think that part changed.
We inherited some of these ICONXXXX.bmps and I moved them over from R14. That may have been a mistake.
I also see various RCDAXXXX.bmp's now with R2005.

Anyway, I've went through all the bitmaps in the folder and all but a few were in one user.mns or another so not much to clean out.

I think after the dust settles, not much will change around here either, except maybe a few toolbar location moves.

Thanks

Bill

 

For what it's worth, when I make my bitmaps, I give them a very specific name and save them in a separate folder, entitled BMP under my main folder, R2004. Wherever you have all those bmp's, you can move them to one directory (of your choice) and rename them (be sure they are correctly called with new name in your mns
or mnu file). Also, when I make my monthly backup (on CD) I make sure to copy all my lsp, bmp, etc files.

 

It worked that way in R14 anyway

As far as I know that behavior is still the same, at least through 2004.
I've never exhaustively tested where the heck the icon editor sends its
BMP's, but it does seems arbitrary.

That may have been a mistake.

Not if they work, it's just that the unclear names make it harder to
understand and maintain things. I'd rather see a menu item like:

[_Button("Roof Slope", "slope.bmp", "slope.bmp")]^C^Cslope;

If you could transition to mnemonic names for the BMP's, it makes it easier
to spot when a user has done the "save" thing and created a gibberish
filename. If they are in fact selecting from among available icons, rather
than creating a new one, they shouldn't even be in the icon editor at all,
as I mentioned earlier.

If they did create a new image in the icon editor, and saved it, then you
have a "learning opportunity" where you show them how to find the new BMP,
move it to their user folder, rename it to something understandable, and
edit the MNS file accordingly. The very few of my users who do this have the
routine down pat, and have even been able to carry their personal menus
between versions with very little coaching.

 

It is very arbitrary and assigns arbitrary numbers to it UNLESS you give it/them
a spcific name.

 

It is very arbitrary and assigns arbitrary numbers to it UNLESS you give
it/them a spcific name.

Exactly. That's why I coach people -- if they're going to use onscreen menu
customizations at all -- to follow through on fixing the BMP filename and
location as I described. Normally, after going through the process once or
twice, they realize they could have skipped the onscreen business altogether
and just done the manual menu edit, since they're going to need to do that
anyway.

Foir the individual partial "user" menus (which is the only thing they're
allowed to edit), I teach them to keep the menu files, all BMP's, and any
lisps associated with their personalizations in their "user" folder. This is
in a subdirectory of Acad, but *not* in the same folder tree as the
company-standard customizations. It's also first on the search path. This
ensures that nothing I do to the standards will affect their
personalizations, as long as they keep them in the correct folder.

All of those who had customized their menu in 2000i were able to simply copy
over their user folder to 2004, menuload their user menu, and (with the
exception of tracking down a few scattered ICONXXXX.bmp files that they
hadn't fixed) they were fully customized and operational in the new version
in just a minute or two.

 

Thanks Tom,

I'm understanding this more now.

It's a little hecktic now but I'll work on this as time goes on.

Bill