Are you sick and tired of having all those Toolbar Bitmap Files
floating around?
And, what a pain it is having to remember to attach the bitmaps along with
the
Toolbar menu file every time you send it to someone, or install the menu
on another workstation. (Smiley Faces here we come..)
The solution to this, is to store the Bitmaps in an ActiveX DLL file. (The
same as
AutoCAD do with their Toolbar Bitmaps.) Here's the steps to construct your
own,
customized Toolbar DLL.
Unfortunately, you will require the Visual Basic Resource Editor which is
only
included with VB6. (I do believe though, that the Resource Editor is
available as a plug-in for VB5.)
Firstly, you need to build your Toolbar along with all relevant Bitmaps
and test it within AutoCAD. Here is the menu file for the VBA Toolbar
which is in the downloadable sample file :
***MENUGROUP=VBA
***TOOLBARS
ID_VBA_0 [_Toolbar("VBA", _Floating, _Show, 350, 246, 1)]
ID_VBA_1 [_Button("VBA Load", "vbaload.bmp", "vbaload32.bmp")]^C^C_vbaload
ID_VBA_2 [_Button("VBA Macro", "vbamacro.bmp", "vbamacro32.bmp")]^C^C_vbarun
ID_VBA_3 [_Button("VBA Editor", "vbaide.bmp", "vbaide32.bmp")]^C^C_vbaide
ID_VBA_4 [_Button("VBA Manager", "vbaman.bmp", "vbaman32.bmp")]^C^Cvbaman
***HELPSTRINGS
ID_VBA_1 [Load VBA Project]
ID_VBA_2 [Run VBA Macro]
ID_VBA_3 [Load VBA Editor]
ID_VBA_4 [Load VBA Manager]
Your Toolbar should look like this :
Now, do yourself a favour and store the Menu file and all Bitmaps into
their own sub-directory. If you don't, you will find it a problem later on
when editing the DLL file to locate all the VB support files.
Now fire up VB6 and start a new ActiveX DLL project. Next, open the VB6
Resource Editor. If it is not loaded, go to the Add-In Manager and load
it.
Once in the Resource Editor, load each of your Bitmap Files, renaming
each Bitmap to match that of the relevant name in the menu. (Right-Click
on each name and select Properties.) Now save your project. (Save it using
the same name as your Menu and to the same sub-directory.)
Finally, choose "File" - "Make YourMenuName.DLL",
again saving it to the same directory. (It is important that the DLL file
has the same name as the Menu.)
You can now exit VB6. (saving any files if prompted.)
One final step. (Well, a couple!!) Open up your Menu file and remove
the .BMP extension from the Bitmap file names. It should look like this :
***MENUGROUP=VBA
***TOOLBARS
ID_VBA_0 [_Toolbar("VBA", _Floating, _Show, 350, 246, 1)]
ID_VBA_1 [_Button("VBA Load", "vbaload", "vbaload32")]^C^C_vbaload
ID_VBA_2 [_Button("VBA Macro", "vbamacro", "vbamacro32")]^C^C_vbarun
ID_VBA_3 [_Button("VBA Editor", "vbaide", "vbaide32")]^C^C_vbaide
ID_VBA_4 [_Button("VBA Manager", "vbaman", "vbaman32")]^C^Cvbaman
***HELPSTRINGS
ID_VBA_1 [Load VBA Project]
ID_VBA_2 [Run VBA Macro]
ID_VBA_3 [Load VBA Editor]
ID_VBA_4 [Load VBA Manager]
Then copy your Menu file and the DLL file to any of your AutoCAD support
path
directories. You now need to re-compile your Menu file. To do this, first
delete all MNS, MNC and MNR files with the same name as your menu. Then
fire up AutoCAD and load your menu. Hopefully, no smiley faces......
From now on, all you need to do to distribute your menu is to include
the DLL file
along with the Menu file. Bye, Bye Bitmaps..... |
