Newbie Help: Automation / Batch file processing

- T
- Todd
  
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posted
19 years ago

Mon, Nov 15, 2004 8:06 PM

Im a programmer working on a team of Pro/E users (wildfire).

I'm trying to figure out it Pro/E has ways to allow me to automate some of the more tedious tasks they perform, such as opening multiple model files.

They used to use IDEA-S, which supported a .CMD file, sort of a BASIC language file that ran and could control the interface, as if the user were running the commands with their mouse and IDEA-S GUI.

Does Pro/E Wildfire have this? I'm a programmer, not a sales pitch reader / CAD guy, so I can't tell from PTC's site if it does or does not (and if it does, what components I would need to be running).

I'll take any language (C/++, JAVA, etc.), by the way... the BASIC thing was just an example...

-- TC

- B
- Ben Loosli
  
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posted
19 years ago

Tue, Nov 16, 2004 1:11 AM

Pro/E has mapkeys, which are just a record of keystrokes used to perform a task. The next level is Pro/Toolkit, which allows you to automate a lot of stuff with C.

- A
- Anonymous
  
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posted
19 years ago

Wed, Nov 17, 2004 3:28 AM

Besides mapkeys, which are basically macros trail files are the most basic tool for automation. A trail file is generated every time you run Pro/E and it records mouse clicks, input, and what not. It can be edited and paused for user input and so on. Besides running one manually a mapkey can call a trail file or a trail file can be specified when you start Pro/E.

Also, Pro/E can be run in batch mode to do the most common/tedious stuff, like batch printing. Take a look at the OCUS utilities, though they're out of date they're very good. It's impressive how much can be done with just shell scripts.

The next step up is Jlink, which is a Java Toolkit for writing applets and automating Pro/E tasks. It's free and mysterious but not installed by default.

The next step up is Pro/Toolkit, which I believe provides a full C/C++ API to Pro/E. It's extra and very expensive last I checked.

Regards,