From www.gcaug.com/per_menu_jclauson.htm

GCAUG -Personal Menus

Personal Menus in AutoCAD 2000


The following was extracted from a presentation given by John Clauson during GCAUG's September 2000 meeting.  At the meeting Clauson demonstrated how to customize a separate personal menu to protect it from changes to any other menu. This brief tutorial below will show you how to create toolbars in a personal menu and how to even make the menu portable.

Note the following should work on versions R13, R14, 2000, and 2000i.




Advantages

  • Separate from AutoCAD menus

  • Can be portable



Overview

  1. Make a menu template.

  2. MENULOAD the menu.

  3. Create your toolbars and icons.

  4. Rename the icon files.*

  5. Edit the menu with the new icon file names*

* (optional, for portability)



Create the menu file

  1. Start a new text file in Notepad or other text editor.

  2. Precede comment lines with double slashes  //

  3. Type the names of the menu group and toolbar section:
        ***MENUGROUP = JOHN
        ***TOOLBARS

  4. Save the file in a folder in the AutoCAD search path. Example:-
    C:\PROGRAM FILES\AUTOCAD 2000\SUPPORT\JBC.MNS




Load the menu

  1. Type MENULOAD. Click Browse and select your new menu file. Click Load.




Create a toolbar

  1. Right click on a tool button or in a docking area. Select Customize.

  2. Click New. Enter the toolbar name. Be sure to select your menu group. Click OK.

  3. Click Customize. Copy icons or create new ones as usual.




Make it portable

  1. Open the menu file in a text editor. Note the name(s) of your new icon(s).

  2. Find the icons and rename them as desired (Ex: ICON4664.bmp to endia.bmp). Tip: use Explorer's FIND function.

  3. Edit the menu files and replace the icon names with the new ones.




Notes

  1. You may find your new icon bitmap files in various locations. Move them to a folder that's in the AutoCAD search path.

  2. You might find that using MS Paint, or any bitmap editor, is easier than the built in editor for making icon files. For best results, save them as 16 color BMP files. (Small icons are 15 pixels tall and 16 wide, large icons are 30x32.)

  3. When everything works OK, save the MNS and BMP files to separate, permanent storage. To use the menu on another machine, copy all the files to a directory in the AutoCAD search path and load the menu as described above.

  4. You can add popups and pull downs to your file, just like any other menu.




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