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CADzette
CAD News... Large and Small
February 10, 2006 - Vol III, Issue 37
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Neil S E Foden, from Great Britain, writes:

I was just reading your latest news letter and the article by Larry Dorshkind about editing the CUI.
When we upgraded from AutoCAD 2002 to 2005, I fell foul of the CUI interface, with the result that the CUI file became corrupted.
By trial and error, I discovered that the easiest way of editing custom menus is by using WordPad to edit the MNS file.
Then to implement the changes, all you need to do is use the “menuload” command to unload your custom menu, then reload the revised MNS file.
The menu recompiles, and all the toolbars, dropdowns etc update and work.
This way avoids going anywhere near the CUI interface, and if you are used to working directly with the menu files, is quick and simple.

Neil's method will indeed work. My concern is that users will continue to use this method and forgo learning about how to use CUI at all. In a couple of releases, MENULOAD will no longer work...you will have merely postponed the inevitable.

However, postponement may not necessarily be a bad thing...it gives Autodesk a couple of releases to fix the CUI and make it right. I would suggest that instead of using WordPad, users take advantage of the Visual Lisp Editor for their menus if they want to stay in mns mode. That way they get some color coding which is always helpful.

To access the Visual Lisp editor, simply type VLIDE on the command line. Stands for Visual Lisp Interface Data Editor - or something like that. You can also get there from the Tools menu, but I find typing faster.
In CADzette - Volume III Issue 34, I included a tutorial on how to place holes on a chamfered edge using Inventor.

Matt Bedsold emails -
Elise, I went through the tutorial for placing a hole on a chamfered edge. What is the function of step 6 (creating the offset work plane)? It seems like the depth of your hole would have to be increased by whatever the offset plane offset was (in the tutorials case 0.10.


You are correct, you need to adjust the depth of the hole to account for the offset workplane. If you use the first workplane to place the hole and not the offset workplane, you will see that the hole does not go completely through the chamfered edge (it gets cut off at the angles), so I bring the work plane out a little to account for the curvature of the plane. Make sense?
In CADzette - Volume III Issue 34, I dissed the new AUGI logo. It is nice to know that I am not alone in my disgust.

A reader, who prefers to be nameless, writes -
First, keep up the good work with the newsletter.
Then a little correction; Rorschach not Rorsharch. [Editor's note - This is not the first time I ran a spell check and still did not get it right...time to go back to the analog method, use a dictionary.]
Third the 'new' augi logo sucks pretty hard. One might imagine that those two 'cartoon character dialog bubbles' is the relationship of augi's board of directors to the augi members at large. the little voice (in white) waiting to receive some crumb of knowledge from those that are anointed (in blue). Or it's more a model of how autodesk (and augi) relate to their customers (members) a strictly top down dialog, where the needs and wants of the customers are drowned out by the marketing hype from above.
All in all there just might be some 'truth' in this new logo. Whereas the old one represented a world of users, this logo simply reinforces that autodesk, nor augi are listening to their customers. Notice in the middle of the 'dialog' a giant BLOCK that prevents those above from hearing those below.
Time was augi was a voice of the users, now the user guidelines and overall attitude isn't too far from simply being another version of autodesk's news groups.

Skyler Mills, from Rhode Island, emails -
Thanks, as always, for your newsletter. I especially liked your rant about logos. Yup, this is what we're paying for. Also, what about the VW logo? Ancient, but still classy and you can't mistake it for anything else.

Amen to the VW logo comment. As for the other writer....Is AUGI increasingly out of touch with users? I think AUGI still provides a valuable service with the ATP programs, tutorials, etc. The forums, which replaced the old Guild email system, are probably a waste - you get more bang on Autodesk's discussion groups. The AUGI Exchange has turned out to be a flop - even though it showed promise. Gosh, I miss some of the old websites, like cadshack and caddepot. Yeah, they are still there, but shadows of their former "user-based" selves.

Oops, my age is showing...I am old enough to recall the renegade days when websites were created and run by users (for users) and not corporations. There are still a couple of those out there....but they are definitely "endangered", if not fast approaching "extinct".