Customizing Bricscad

Customize Bricscad (Internet connection needed)

There are several ways to customize Bricscad. You can change the look of Bricscad by adapting the layout of menus and toolbars but you can also compose macro's, write LISP routines or use VBA to change the way Bricscad works.

All customization that affects the user interface is done in the Customize dialog and saved in CUI files. CUI stands for Customize User Interface. The definitions for all menus, toolbars and keyboard shortcuts are loaded from the main CUI file (default.cui) when you launch Bricscad.

Additional definitions, such as your own customizations, are loaded from partial CUI files.

Aliases and shell commands are loaded from the default.pgp file.

NOTE

It is recommended not to modify the default.cui file. With each new update, the Bricscad installer resplaces the existing default.cui. If the existing default customization file has changed, you will be prompted whether or not keep the existing file (see the Bricscad user file manager). However, if new tools are added in an update, you will not be able to access them until you load the new default.cui. If you are not sure whether the most recent default customization file is used, press the Revert to default button on the Customize dialog.

Store your customizations in a partial CUI file, with each new update the default.cui is updated automatically. To restore your customizations, reload the partial CUI file. The reference to your partial CUI file is stored in the main cui file (default.cui).

In any case if you customize menus, toolbars, accelerators, aliases, it is recommended to keep a copy of these files, including default.cui and default.pgp, before doing an update.

Another approach to keeping your menu customization when changing to a new version of Bricscad is to make your custom CUI file the "main" CUI file (see: To load a main cui file), and attach "default.cui" to it as a "partial" CUI file (see: To load a partial cui file). Then you don't have to do anything when you update. The new "default.cui" overwrites the old one, and replaces it as the "partial" CUI attached to your custom CUI file. It automatically updates, very much like an xref drawing file that you edit or replace with another file of the same name. Another advantage of this method is that if you've customized the context menus, your versions are used instead of the default ones, since yours are in the "main" file. You don't have to delete the default context menus, or make any change at all to the new default menu file when you update.

In any case if you customize menus, toolbars, accelerators, aliases, it is recommended to keep a copy of these files, including default.cui and default.pgp, before doing an update.