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MNS files and the CUI


guitarguy1685

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I'm currently in the process of creating an Enterprise CUI for the company. This is essentially just combining all our menus into one single CUI. I am also modifying paths for all the menus.

 

The way we had it was we would load up the MNS files using the legacy command menuload. AutoCAD would then create a cui file, which it would load. For almost all of the menus we still have the original .mns file that I can edit in text editor. However there is one that I do not have the .mns file, I only have the .cui file.'

 

As far as I know you can not edit the cui in a text editor. So I have to go through the cui and manually chage a path one command at a time by copy/paste. I would really like to just do a find/replace like I've done for the other files.

 

Is there a way I can recover the menus in text format from the CUI?

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Make a copy of the cui file with the mns file you need and change the extension to zip. Open it to find you mns file.

 

Avid cui fan since 2006 who didn't switch to the Ribbon till 2011 when it fully supported Civil 3D. Haven't used a menu since. I have easy access to everything with My Ribbon including command and control access not available anywhere else except the Quick Access Toolbar. It also includes around a hundred custom macros.

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Tombu snuck in while I was typing. If you just open a .cui with notepad it reveals text. If you rename a .cuix to .ZIP you can again get at the cui's inside. There is a "cui to mnu" vlisp but I did not find it too successful.

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I tried your suggestion. I changed the file extension to .zip and opened it in WinRAR. I see what I'm assuming to be the Menus but that is also a cui file. I tried changing that extension to .zip but I get errors trying to open it. See images below.

 

http://imgur.com/YmINqrO

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Avid cui fan since 2006 who didn't switch to the Ribbon till 2011 when it fully supported Civil 3D. Haven't used a menu since. I have easy access to everything with My Ribbon including command and control access not available anywhere else except the Quick Access Toolbar. It also includes around a hundred custom macros.

 

I agree. I didn't like the Ribbons at first but now I can't stand to look at toolbars. Most of my office runs toolbars out of stubbornness. As for the menus, we only use them for inserting blocks. We have an extensive collection of proprietary system blocks. The menus seems like an easy way to locate them.

 

Toolpalletes work well for our annotation stuff, but the system stuff gets lost in Toolpalletes. Also I can't incorporate Toolpalletes into Enterprise which is quite irritating.

 

What do you use for inserting blocks?

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There is a "cui to mnu" vlisp but I did not find it too successful.

 

I found one, and yeah, not very successful. I may have to rebuild it from scratch.

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As far as I know you can not edit the cui in a text editor.

I have in the past manually edited the CUI sucessfully, even though Autodesk say that you are not supposed to be able to.

 

If I remember correctly I used notepad so that there was no extra formating applied when I re saved the file.

http://www.cadeverything.com/help/showthread.php/5931-Manually-Edit-the-CUI?

 

I'm not sure if it helps in this case, but just wanted to point out that it is posible to edit the CUI in an external editor, usual caveat - make a backup first.

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I agree. I didn't like the Ribbons at first but now I can't stand to look at toolbars. Most of my office runs toolbars out of stubbornness. As for the menus, we only use them for inserting blocks. We have an extensive collection of proprietary system blocks. The menus seems like an easy way to locate them.

 

Toolpalletes work well for our annotation stuff, but the system stuff gets lost in Toolpalletes. Also I can't incorporate Toolpalletes into Enterprise which is quite irritating.

 

What do you use for inserting blocks?

 

Using Civil 3D any that can be inserted automatically from survey data must be defined in the template already. I have an MUTCD drawing with most signs used in the US from Florida's DOT and use Design Center to add them in. I have a main Blocks folder on the network pinned to Quick Access in Open with many Subfolders like scales, Structures, and Trees for quick access. I also use macros with lisp to insert a few specific blocks and fill in attributes when needed.

 

Years ago I created Image Tile Menus and even used a Block library routine, but they were difficult to maintain and AutoCAD has made adding blocks much easier than in years past.

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