Entity specific context menu

By Adam Nagy

You can add items to the context menu inside the OnLinearMarkingMenu event handler. This also provides the list of currently selected entities. You can easily check if they are of a given entity type or not - e.g. if they are Ordinate Dimensions - and based on that decide if we add our own control definition or not.

This VBA sample shows how to do it. When the class (I named it clsLinearMarkingMenu) is initialized the Class_Initialize function is called and there we check if our control definition has already been registered. If not, then we create it and register it. Inside the OnExecute event handler of our control definition we can do the operation we want when our control (context menu item in this case) is clicked. In this case we'll add a plus sign to the dimension text.

Class clsLinearMarkingMenu:

Dim WithEvents uie As UserInputEvents
Dim WithEvents bd1 As ButtonDefinition

Private Sub bd1_OnExecute(ByVal Context As NameValueMap)
  Dim ss As SelectSet
  Set ss = ThisApplication.ActiveDocument.SelectSet

  Dim ordDim As OrdinateDimension
  For Each ordDim In ss
    ' Change the text of the selected ordinate dimensions
    ordDim.Text.FormattedText = _
      ordDim.Text.FormattedText + "+"
  Next
End Sub

Private Sub Class_Initialize()
  Dim cm As CommandManager
  Set cm = ThisApplication.CommandManager
  
  Set uie = cm.UserInputEvents
      
  ' Make sure our control is available
  On Error Resume Next
  Set bd1 = cm.ControlDefinitions("DimTextPlus")
  If bd1 Is Nothing Then
    Set bd1 = cm.ControlDefinitions.AddButtonDefinition( _
      "Dim Text +", "DimTextPlus", kNonShapeEditCmdType)
  End If
End Sub

Function AreAllOrdinate(entities As ObjectsEnumerator) As Boolean
  Dim entity As Object
  For Each entity In entities
    If Not TypeOf entity Is OrdinateDimension Then
      AreAllOrdinate = False
      Exit Function
    End If
  Next
  AreAllOrdinate = True
End Function

Private Sub uie_OnLinearMarkingMenu( _
ByVal SelectedEntities As ObjectsEnumerator, _
ByVal SelectionDevice As SelectionDeviceEnum, _
ByVal LinearMenu As CommandControls, _
ByVal AdditionalInfo As NameValueMap)
  ' We only add our context menu item if the
  ' selected entities are all ordinate dimensions
  If AreAllOrdinate(SelectedEntities) Then
    Call LinearMenu.AddButton(bd1)
  End If
End Sub

Then we can instantiate our class in any of the Modules:

Dim lmm As clsLinearMarkingMenu

Sub TestLinearMarkingMenu()
  Set lmm = New clsLinearMarkingMenu
End Sub

Now when we right-click on an ordinate dimension our menu item will show up: