Advantages of an Enterprise CUI?

[DB007]

We're about to do some upgrades to LT2011 and are considering using an enterprise CUI to get some custom commands onto the users toolbars/ribbons. Mainly so when we update them we dont have to go round every machine and manually change the commands.

 

I followed a tutorial lesson on AU on setting up an enterprise CUI where the enterprise is the company CUI with the custom commands. The Main CUI is a blank file for the user to customise how he/she wishes. which I understand makes it easy to transfer the users custom settings when upgrading version or PC.

 

With Toolbars its easy to have all the company commands grouped together in Company Toolbars. With the Ribbon arguably similar, you could have a Tab for all of the company panels of commands. But what if the user wants to add their own custom command to one of the existing Panels of the default Home Tab which is locked in the enterprise CUI?

 

If I understand correctly there is a method to merge Panels between the enterprise and the Main CUI but its a little complicated for the guys to setup.

 

Im curious how everyone else handles this?

 

Thanks in advance.

[tzframpton]

1st off, LT offers very little (if any in most cases) support for customizations so be careful as to what exactly you are customizing.

 

2nd, you can easily "combine" Ribbon Tabs by simply clicking on the Workspace in the CUI, then click "Customize Workspace" under the Workspace Contents panel on the right hand side of the CUI Dialog Box. From there you can enable any Ribbon Tab from any CUI/CUIx file, partial or not. After you make your settings, click Apply then Okay to exit the dialog box saving the changes, then type WSSAVE to save the Workspace so the changes stick for all future sessions of AutoCAD. This way you can have the Enterprise CUI functioning along side the Main CUI so you can have the best of both worlds.

 

Sad thing is that although Autodesk boasts that AutoCAD is "enterprise software" at times, there's still lots of manual procedures, such as this one. It still would require going to each CAD station to set this up (I believe). I could be wrong and Autodesk might have allowed a CAD Management feature to do this as a deployment but I doubt it.

 

Hope this helps.

[BIGAL]

Are you using partial menus or have you just added your stuff to the main CUI ?

 

I have seen around pretty sure an example tutorial using vlisp about loading and overwriting cui's and adding profile details so when you have a new machine you run one program and all done. I think it was in Vlisp users bible.

[tzframpton]

Anything's possible with Vlisp. Just wish other things were possible right OOTB. :wink:

[BlackBox]

Anything's possible with Vlisp. Just wish other things were possible right OOTB. :wink:

 

Would you please provide an example of how to properly access the WinZip Application Object (without using .NET/Visual Studio)?

 

For example (non-working):

 

(setq wzip (vlax-get-or-create-object "MSWinZip.Application"))

[tzframpton]

How the HELL would I know that? Ask someone over at The Swamp where the real programmers lounge around!! haha

[BlackBox]

How the HELL would I know that? Ask someone over at The Swamp where the real programmers lounge around!! haha

 

Just ribbing you - I couldn't help myself. lmao

 

Besides all the major developers from the swamp, are here too. lol

[tzframpton]

Yeah they are but they spend more time over there, besides Lee Mac and alanjt.

[Tyke]

DB007 said

We're about to do some upgrades to LT2011...

Then he can't use Vlisp.