use of trial.txt

They can be used like macros to recreate the work done in past sessions or in some cases to automate a task.

Unfortunately this tends to be a tedious way to 'save' work and replaying a trail file is extremely sensitive to the state of the files on disk compared to how they were when the trail file was created. Just use groups.google.com to find out more details.

Personally, while it hurts to lose a lot of work, I've learned to save more often, and when I do need to recreate work I find I can always execute it much, much faster than it took the first time, and usually a little bit better. I view trail files as legacy stuff.

Dave

Trail files, ahhhh, brings back memories (none of them good!) Way back when Pro/e was a doityourself Unix project and a crack team of sysadmins ruled the roost, these were diagnostic files. Pro/e crapped out, this was recorded in the trail.txt.123 file (and maybe, if you were lucky, something akin to a fault code upon exit). Other uses were found, such as running a session (exited without crashing) that demonstrated the creation of a particular kind of feature. Thus, they became training files or attempts were made in various places to use them as such. Honestly, when they ran right (a fifty/fifty proposition), they were a preferable alternative to listening to some bloke who couldn't walk and chew gum at the same time trying to give a User Group presentation, talking and creating features at the same time (not a pretty sight). Anyway, as Dave said, this has kind of fallen by the wayside, legacy stuff, replaced by better vidcap software for presentations and some actual fault/fatal error handling by the program and error capture/recording. But, in case you are tempted to mess with trail files, a word of warning: about half ended in a crash and, should you figure out how to run a trail file, this one will also end, abruptly, in a Pro/e CTD. Then you start editing....

David Janes

David,

as much as I like your rants in this NG I don´t agree whenever you choose do it against Unix. Beating the dead horse.

To administer a system through editing was not a bad way, since one could do things with few keys that now require no navigate through an ocean of colourful mouse-click-junk.

I guess there are a lot of people out there uncomfortable with the idea of leaving it all up to Bill & his company.

I´m still using the "import-from-trail-file" method for analysis of models which bombed out a ProE session. Some user´s still manage to do this from time to time.

Walther