Lost custom toolbars

[Royker]

I am a big fan of custom buttons. I have created some that have rather lengthy an complex macros. We use Microvellum which runs on an AutoCAD platform to generate BOMs and CNC programs. When you install the program, it reconfigures AutoCAD using its own menu file. A recent upgrade has been ran and a ConfigureAutoCad2004.exe program ran. As a result, all my custom toolbars, buttons and their respective macros are gone. I realize that this may be a Microvellum issue and I have contacted them. But I figure that maybe someone knows of a quick fix. Thanks for any help. It would save me many hours trying to reconstruct all that customization.

 

[Tom Smith]

Are you positive the toolbars are gone? Did you look in the new mns file? Are the toolbars simply turned off?

Search for your former custom menus, either mns or mnu file types. If you didn't back them up, and if they were overwritten, they're gone. I suppose you've learned, now, to always completely back up your CAD setup before running anything that's going to "ConfigureAutoCad2004."

You didn't specify, but I'm assuming you modified the standard Acad menu. Did the install program replace and overwrite your Acad menu, or did it simply load a different menu instead?

In either case, there probably isn't a "quick fix." One or the other base menus - customized Acad or Microvellum - needs to have its custom features stripped out and placed in a partial menu to be loaded via menuload. You can load as many partial menus as you want, but only one base menu.

This is one of several reasons that menu customizations should generally be done in a partial menu, leaving the standard Acad base menu alone. If your customizations were in a partial menu, they would have been unaffected, and you could simply menuload the partial menu to get them back.

I am a big fan of custom buttons. I have created some that have rather

lengthy an complex macros. We use Microvellum which runs on an AutoCAD platform to generate BOMs and CNC programs. When you install the program, it reconfigures AutoCAD using its own menu file. A recent upgrade has been ran and a ConfigureAutoCad2004.exe program ran. As a result, all my custom toolbars, buttons and their respective macros are gone. I realize that this may be a Microvellum issue and I have contacted them. But I figure that maybe someone knows of a quick fix. Thanks for any help. It would save me many hours trying to reconstruct all that customization.

 

[Royker]

Hey Tom,
Thanks for the info. Fortunately I was able to recover the toolbars last Friday. Evidently when you run the ConfigureAutoCAD2004.exe file, it takes the current mns files and adds a .old extension and replaces it with the new mns file. The standard acad menu is not affected as it's not being used. The mns file is generated by Microvellum and contains menu items for both AutoCad and Microvellum.

Anyway, I unloaded the new mns file, reloaded the old one after removing the .old extension, created a user profile, reloaded the new mns file and applied the user profile I created. As far as I can tell, the new configuration is intact and I have all my custom toolbars/buttons back. At the very least I could have extracted the button macros from the old mns file and recreated the buttons because all the bitmaps where still in my support directory. Thanks again.

 

[Tom Smith]

Thanks for the info. Fortunately I was able to recover the toolbars last Friday.

That's good news. I couldn't believe the setup would have destroyed your stuff without backing it up somehow.

I'd suggest moving your custom buttons to a partial menu. That way you could use them with either the Acad menu or the Microvellum menu.