Electrical Design Software | Elecdes Design Suite by Scada Systems Ltd

How to Customize the AutoCAD Partial Menu

General

This section applies to AutoCAD users only. PowerCAD users refer to How to Customize the PowerCAD Toolbar Palettes and Menu.

Typical customisation tasks for Elecdes:

  • Add a new toolbar button or menu entry to access a new icon menu you have created

Menu Filename

The Elecdes menu file is named SCADA.MNU and is stored in the support directory. It is a TEXT file and should only be edited with a TEXT editor (i.e. not with a Word Processor).

Menu File Changes

There are two parts to the Elecdes menu file you can modify; the "Toolbar" menus and the "Pull down" menus.

Most functions are common to both sections. Note that there are two menus in the pull down section, the Elecdes main menu and the Elecdes context menu.

Procedure to customise and load the menu file

To load changes to the menu file you must follow the (laborious AutoCAD) procedure below - in the order specified.

  1. Open the menu file SCADA.MNU. To open this file for editing, use Windows Explorer to view the file, then double click on it. If asked, select "Wordpad.exe" as your editing tool.

  2. Make the additions/ alterations to the menu file as described below.

  3. Save the menu file.

  4. Run AutoCAD.

  5. Run the AutoCAD command MENULOAD.

  6. Select the Menu Group TAB.

  7. Select the SCADA menu group.

  8. Press the Unload button. This unloads the old Elecdes menu.

  9. Press the Browse button. The "File Open" dialog will be displayed.

  10. Browse to and select the file SCADA.MNU. NB. You must select the MNU file not MNC or MNS.

  11. Upon return to the menu group tab, press the Load button.

  12. After you have successfully re-loaded the ELECDES menu group, switch to the Menu Bars Tab.

  13. Add the Elecdes menu bar to the right hand list then Close the menu load dialog.

  14. The Elecdes menu bar should appear at the top of your screen.

Adding a New Menu Entry for displaying an Icon Menu

The format of a menu entry that activates an icon menu is shown below:

ID_sswn [Switches Normally c&losed]^C^C(setq eds_params '("ElecdesSlides.SWN"));slide;


  • The first part ID_sswn is the identifier of the menu entry

  • The text for the menu entry must be enclosed in brackets. For this example the menu text is Switches Normally c&losed. Note that the '&' character allows you to use a keyboard shortcut key for the character immediately after the '&'. In this case the letter l

  • The call to slide function will display the icon menus in the ElecdesSlides.SWN. Elecdes uses setq for loading the variable eds_params with ElecdesSlides.SWN as a parameter and then executing the slide function. You must enclose ElecdesSlides in quotes as shown above. The first part of the text must be ElecdesSlides followed by  a '.' and then the name of the icon menu you want to display, in this case SWN. Then you must include a ';' followed by the function name e.g. slide as shown above.

Adding a New Toolbar Button for displaying an Icon Menu

The format of a toolbar button entry that activates an icon menu is shown below:

ID_sswn [_Button("Switches Normally closed", 16_sswn, 32_sswn)]^C^C(setq eds_params '("ElecdesSlides.SWN"));slide;


  • The first part ID_sswn is the identifier of the toolbar button

  • The ToolTip for the toolbar entry must be enclosed in quote. For this example the ToolTip is Switches Normally closed.

  • You must then include the name of the bitmaps you want to use for the button. These bitmaps are stored in the <EDS>\ELECDES directory. In this example they are 16_sswn.bmp and 32_sswn.bmp

  • The call to slide function will display the icon menus in the ElecdesSlides.SWN. Elecdes uses setq for loading the variable eds_params with ElecdesSlides.SWN as a parameter and then executing the slide function. You must enclose ElecdesSlides in quotes as shown above. The first part of the text must be ElecdesSlides followed by  a '.' and then the name of the icon menu you want to display, in this case SWN. Then you must include a ';' followed by the function name e.g. slide as shown above.

Right Button Menus

The Elecdes RIGHT BUTTON menu is also found in the MNU file. The right button menu is titled **ELECDESRIGHTMENU in the MNU file. It normally contains a subset of the commonly used functions found on the Elecdes pull down menu.

For GSTARCAD the MNU file entries for the Elecdes RIGHT BUTTON menu are now loaded to a DBF file named ELECDESMENU.DBF. The Elecdes system will create a RIGHT BUTTON menu at load time with this information. To the user, the right button menus of GSTARCAD and AutoCAD should appear to be identical.

ELECDESMENU.DBF has 3 columns for each menu entry; an ID column which contains an identifier used by the program, a MENUITEM column for the "display text" and a COMMAND column which contains the CAD command line for that function. You do not need to add carriage returns or ";" to this command.