I’ve been playing a little bit with the commands Tools > Save Customized Settings and Tools > Load Customized Settings. For those that have not played with the two commands, the basic idea is that you can customize the GeoMedia user interface using Tools > Customize. Once you have it the way you like it, you can use Tools > Save Customized Settings and that will save the interface to an XML file. You can then use Tools > Load Customized Settings to load this custom interface whenever you’d like.
Additionally, you can use the "custom" parameter as part of your GeoMedia shortcut to load the customized settings when you launch GeoMedia. In other words, if I go to Start > Run and type in GeoMedia, assuming your Windows path is setup correctly, this should launch GeoMedia. Now, if you type the following in the Run dialog: ‘GeoMedia.exe /custom “D:\xmlfiles\MySettings.xml”’ where D:\xmlfiles\MySettings.xml is replaced with a XML file with your customized settings, GeoMedia will launch and the customized settings will be set. Naturally, this could be rolled into a standard Windows shortcut that will launch your customized settings when you launch GeoMedia.
As a whole, if you like to have different GUI setups depending on the workflow e.g. "setup A" for digitizing, "setup B" map analysis, and "setup C" for plotting, this functionality should be quite useful. As all you would need to do is setup three distinct customized settings XML files and three corresponding GeoMedia shortcuts to launch your customized settings.
However, for me personally, I’d rather see you be able to save the settings on a geoworkspace by geoworkspace instance. This is something that you could do with ArcView 3.x and I believe you can even do with ArcGIS. This to me is much more beneficial as you can customize the GUI for "application A" that would involve data entry in one way and customize the GUI for "application B" that involves a lot of querying with another interface. Both would be triggered by the launching of a .gws as opposed to a GeoMedia shortcut. Of course another way to do this would be to be able to call GeoMedia, a customized settings XML file, and a .gws; all in one shortcut. However I haven’t been able to find a way to do this yet. If anybody has any ideas, please let me know.
Finally, one barrier to really making this useful is GeoMedia’s HORRIBLE handling of toolbar locations. To this day, I often have my toolbars jump around and move to different locations when I load GeoMedia. This has been a problem as long as I’ve used the software. Let me assure you, the customized settings command does NOTHING to solve this. Even if I save my settings with only one row of tools, when I load the settings, it’s very likely that the toolbars will not appear in the same one line of tools but will again appear in many different lines. I’m thinking you could probably get around this issue by creating one "master" toolbar with just the tools that you need. However if you’re going to use multiple toolbars, be prepared to have them "jump" around. This to me is really a showstopper.
Initial Toolbar:
Customized Toolbar:
When I saved the settings, there were no gaps between the various toolbars.
Ah yes, the ol’ “jumping toolbar” feature.
Gotta love it.
Good to see someone else is also struggling with the same. Although be aware that it is not possible to export from GeoMedia Proffessional and import into GeoMedia. I tried it and it ended up changing the buttons. For instance when I clicked the button that looks like PAN it zoomed out instead – it seemed all the buttons shifted one button to the left. And I had to reset. Is there a good way to copy settings from one computer to another (thinking about ONLY keyboard-shortcuts – because thats the only one I use) For instance placing the configuration file on a server – and then have GeoMedia load the same file when loading no matter which computer you are at?
Follow up on my own post:
It seems that installing additional addons is the problem (ie. Imagestation OrthoPro or PixelQue or other). When I recently installed PixelQue the menu`s get mixed up again. I now have the following Menu: File – Edit – View – Insert – Tools – Analysis – Warehouse – Legend – OrthoPro – PixelQue – Window – Help and so on. The problem is that on the PixelQue menu I have the options: “New PixelQue Warehouse – Open PixelQue Warehouse etc….” – but hoovering over the options the status- bar shows the wrong information and clicking on one of the options does not send me to for instance “New PixelQue Warehouse” but instead send me to the first option on the OrthoPro menu. The same goes for the options on the Toolbars. When clicked they will “guide” you to other functions than the one you clicked.
1. Have anyone else experienced this?
2. Is there a way to reset the Toolbars and menus AND import the necessary “plugin- menu`s (ie OrthoPro and PixelQue and other self-made) ? I see that OrthoPro has a “Register OrthoPro Commands” button but PixelQue and other plugins does not have this.
I appreciate all help on the subject.
I have seen this on rare occassion. I would assume the “Register OrthoPro Commands” would work for OrthoPro, correct? Have you tried an uninstall/reinstall of PixelQue to see if that fixes the problem? Otherwise you might need to go into the registry and remove PixelQue that way and then reinstall PixelQue. Royal pain in the butt, but can’t think of another way off the top of my head. I had this same problem with Geocoding and Fusion a couple of months ago. I believe I posted it on the blog – discussing a couple of utilities I found that helped with the uninstall process. Anyhow, I had to uninstall all of my GM software, clean-out the registry, and then reinstall it all to fix the problem.
Not a very elegant solution to say the least 🙁
Wow, swift reply!
Thats my experience from before also. That it was not enough to remove only the “plugins” (OrthoPro etc) but you also had to uninstall GeoMedia completely. And if this problem occurs every time you want to try a new plugin then its a real pain in the butt. Would be nice to have some kind of fix-menu/toolbar solution on the new GeoMedia 6.1 – but I don`t know where to post this as a feature. Perhaps you have the authority since you have the Beta version?