Modeling
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Special Menu in AC10?

Anonymous
Not applicable
Hi,
How does one enable Special Menu in AC10?
Thanks,
Joseph
8 REPLIES 8
Link
Graphisoft Partner
Graphisoft Partner
How does one enable Special Menu in AC10?
The same way as it was in AC9. Karl O. gave a tutorial on it here:

http://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewtopic.php?p=23529&highlight=#23529

Cheers,
Link.
Vitruvius
Booster
Karls method doesn't work on a Mac.

There was a discussion on the Mac a few months ago - try the Search function.

Cheers
Cameron Hestler, Architect
Archicad 27 / Mac Studio M1 Max - 32 GB / LG24" Monitors / 14.5 Sonoma
Link
Graphisoft Partner
Graphisoft Partner
Karls method doesn't work on a Mac.
Care to explain why? Seems to be quite straightforward to me.

Cheers,
Link.
Anonymous
Not applicable
On the Mac you need to use a plist editor to open the ArchiCAD prefs file. I forget which one it is. I just tried the ArchiCAD 10 Basic.prefs and got an error message so maybe that isn't it.

You're right Link. Karl's method is for either platform after the special menu is enabled in the Registry or by editing the plist.
Link
Graphisoft Partner
Graphisoft Partner
Karl's method is for either platform after the special menu is enabled in the Registry or by editing the plist
Yep - it was all included in the link. Ben explained it. He basically said:
.... modify the file:

~/Library/Preferences/com.graphisoft.archicad9.plist

... open the file .... and find the lines of text that tell it to turn the special menu on. alter the 'no' to a 'yes' (or perhaps a '0' to a '1').

.... use the developer tool 'Plist Editor' which is installed as a part of the developer tools package. everybody has a developer tools installer file installed as a part of the default mac OSX install. you can find it in ./Applications/Installers/ ...

... once you've installed the developer tools, the Plist Editor can be found in ./Developer/Applications/ ...
Seems straightforward, but maybe Cameron has found a problem?

Cheers,
Link.
__archiben
Booster
Link wrote:
Seems straightforward, but maybe Cameron has found a problem?
the problem is that there is no special menu defined in the work environments of the mac version of archicad 10! you have to actually define the menu yourself once you've enabled it in the plist file . . .

ahem! as some people will already know . . . i'm quite proud of my AC10 menus . . .

~/archiben
b e n f r o s t
b f [a t ] p l a n b a r c h i t e c t u r e [d o t] n z
archicad | sketchup! | coffeecup
Link
Graphisoft Partner
Graphisoft Partner
Gidday mate - hope everything went well over there.
the problem is that there is no special menu defined in the work environments of the mac version of archicad 10! you have to actually define the menu yourself once you've enabled it in the plist file . .
Unless I am missing something, what you describe above is exactly what happens on a PC too. We have to manually rebuild our Special menu, which is why we have to follow the instructions so closely.

One point to note is that when we first enable it, the Special menu won't appear when we list the commands and menus by 'All commands by theme', but only when we list them 'All menus in alphabetical order', as we may expect.

The only way the Special menu appears automatically in our menu bar is if we have enabled it through the Registry Editor and added it to the menu bar using the methods already discussed, then disabled it and then re-enabled it again. Then it will seem to appear magically in our menu bar!

Is the more to it than that?

Cheers,
Link.
__archiben
Booster
Link wrote:
Is the more to it than that?
yeah - it simply doesn't exist. as far as i remember it didn't even show in 'All menus in alphabetical order' either . . . i had to build it as a brand new menu myself.

by the way, is there a beginners guide to hacking a windows XP registry to get it to show on windows? i've gone and got myself one of those macbook pro intel machines and i'm all XP'd up. now i need to figure out how it works . . . just installing it was trouble enough. look out revit - you're next!!!

cheers
~/archiben
b e n f r o s t
b f [a t ] p l a n b a r c h i t e c t u r e [d o t] n z
archicad | sketchup! | coffeecup