Advance Steel Third Party Settings

Learn how to add third party settings to the Advance Steel settings.

Starting with Advance Steel 2017, third party users can add their own settings to the Advance Steel settings. The current Advance Steel settings are stored in the ASSettings_Advance.xml file, located in %ProgramFiles%\Autodesk\AutoCAD [Year]\ADVS folder. The third party settings should be written in an .xml file in the same format as the ASSettings_Advance.xml file.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<ASSettingsData xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
<Root Name="HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE">
<Key Name="Software">
   <Key Name="Autodesk">
      <Key Name="AdvanceSteel">
         <Key Name="2017">

            User settings go here…

         </Key>
      </Key>
   </Key>
</Key>
</Root>
</ASSettingsData>

These settings will be added to the original Advance settings and will overwrite them if the names are matching.

The file with the third party settings needs to be placed in the ThirdPartySettings folder. The path to this folder is the BinPath setting value (see ASSettings_Advance.xml). Usually the path will be %ProgramFiles%\Autodesk\AutoCAD [Year]\ADVS\ThirdPartySettings.

The name of the .xml file is not important and there could be multiple .xml settings files. These files could also be placed into subfolders inside the ThirdPartySettings folder. If there are multiple settings with the same name, only the last one will be taken into account, so it is better to avoid such situations.

Example: Add a 3rd party country add-in

Create %ProgramFiles%\Autodesk\AutoCAD [Year]\ADVS\ThirdPartySettings\NewZealand.xml file.

Add the country add-in settings in this file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<ASSettingsData xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
<Root Name="HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE">
   <Key Name="Software">
      <Key Name="Autodesk">
         <Key Name="AdvanceSteel">
           <Key Name="2017">
               <Key Name="CountryDependentAddIn">
                 <Key Name="NewZealand.dll">
                    <Value Name="Language" Type="DWORD32">9</Value>
                    <Value Name="AddinFolder" Type="String">NewZealand</Value>
                     <Value Name="CountryName" Type="String">NewZealand</Value>
                              <Value Name="Desc" Type="String">Drawing styles for New Zealand</Value>
                     <Value Name="LongDesc" Type="String">Drawing styles for New Zealand</Value>
                     <Value Name="Name" Type="String">Steel</Value>
                  </Key>
               </Key>
            </Key>
         </Key>
      </Key>
   </Key>
</Root>
</ASSettingsData>

Place the country add-in NewZealand.dll file in the %ProgramFiles%\Autodesk\AutoCAD [Year]\ADVS\CountryDependentAddIn folder.

Create your own folder (with databases, prototypes, bill of materials, etc.) in the %ProgramData%\Autodesk\Advance Steel [Year]\NewZealand folder.

Advance Steel Third Party Settings

Example: Add a 3rd party country add-in

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