The Admin Pulldown Menu

As a CAD Administrator, I found that some users get in the kind of trouble that requires what I call “Base lining” of their setup. This means they have jacked up maybe the PGP file or system variables, or maybe they went into Options once and now nothing works. What this really means is I will probably have to spend more time than I want at this user’s station at with them hanging on me every minute because they have work to do.

Well, here is a tool that a buddy of mine thought up to help in these types of situations.

Quite simply it is a pull down menu that has some very special functions like Reload CUI, Baseline System Variables, Reinit PGP, Clean DWG File, Baseline Profile and what ever else you need here. It’s just there for your use.

I keep it a secret to prevent accidental base lining. I use the following lisp to automatically load it to any workstation I may need to use it at. The last item in my ADMIN pulldown calls the second lisp, which removes the pulldown.

This lets you sit down at anyone’s PC, type “admin” to load the menu, access what you need and then select the unload to unload it altogether. They never knew what hit them.

Next time I’ll throw out some functions you might find helpful to have on your Admin menu.

Load Admin menu
(defun c:admin ()
(setvar "cmdecho" 0)
(setvar "filedia" 0)
(if (not (menugroup "Administration"))
(progn
(command "menuload" "c:/AcmeCAD/menu/administration")
(menucmd "P16=+administration.pop1")
)
(prompt "\nThe Admin menu is already loaded!")
)
(setvar "cmdecho" 1)
(setvar "filedia" 1)
(princ "\nThe Administration Menu has been loaded.")
(princ)
)


Unload Admin menu
(defun c:unadmin ()
(setvar "cmdecho" 0)
(setvar "filedia" 0)
(if (not (menugroup "Administration"))
(prompt "\nThe Admin menu is not loaded!")
(progn
(command "menuunload" "Administration")
(princ "\nThe Adminstration menu has been unloaded.")
)
)
(setvar "cmdecho" 1)
(setvar "filedia" 1)
(princ)
)