"Save As PDF" in Task Scheduler

Yes, Custom task.

So how does it work that way? Do I need to create a macro? I've never worked with macros in Solidworks before. Any help on how to get this set up would be appreciated.

Thanks, Richard

Richard,

Our company has developed a SolidWorks DLL add-in which can be configured (via XML text file) to listen for specific SolidWorks events and trigger the execution of a user specified macro & procedure. The events that are supported are:

SldWorks FileNewNotify2 SldWorks FileOpenNotify2 PartDoc DestroyNotify PartDoc FileSaveAsNotify2 PartDoc FileSaveNotify PartDoc FileSavePostNotify AssemblyDoc DestroyNotify AssemblyDoc FileSaveAsNotify2 AssemblyDoc FileSaveNotify AssemblyDoc FileSavePostNotify DrawingDoc DestroyNotify DrawingDoc FileSaveAsNotify2 DrawingDoc FileSaveNotify DrawingDoc FileSavePostNotify

We also have written a SolidWorks VBA macro which enhances to the output options provided with the SolidWorks 2004 SaveAs PDF capabilities. This macro adds the ability to create a PDF containing all sheets, only the active drawing sheet, or creating an individual PDF file for each sheet. If required, this macro could be modified to save the PDF files to a single folder. Currently it saves the files to the same folder as the drawing file.

Please contact me to discuss further if you are interested.

Best regards,

John Picinich

Thanks for the info. I'll talk to the other guys here and see if it's something we want to pursue.

Richard

You write a macro to handle the task. You make some params to pass to it, (in taskmanager help there is an explaination of how to set this up. I would like to see and example file myself, if anyone has one.) then you setup a custom task in Scheduler and specify your macro and fill in the parameters.

Corey

I havent had the pleasure of playing with Task Manager - it didnt install when 'upgrading' 04 install in work.

Well, I was wondering why noone posted some snippet, hell, its only one line of code to export the PDF, right? Well, seems you'll need a few hundred more lines to get any feedback or error handling :/

The following code module does SOME of this. If all is well, then it wont have any problems, but there isnt enuff error handling to handle all problems, and basically nothing for reporting, to show WHICH files it had the problem with.

For Instance, the file search routine will find ALL .slddrw files: hidden files, files in your SW temp dir, etc, etc.

Also, it does not use the task manager. If something is amiss, it may be stuck on waiting for the user to select from some error dialog. If all goes well, you could still fill up your Hard Disk. USE WITH CAUTION.

But what it DOES is present the user with the windows "Browse For Folder" dialog, and lets the user select a base folder to search from. The routine then searches the folder, and ALL CHILD folders, for SW drawings. It returns a dialog with the # of files found, and, if any are found, if the users wishes to export all of them as PDF files.

The code is a stand alone module, and all variables are private to the module, so this should Paste into other projects (as well as post more easily on the NG's) Also, the file search extension, and output extension are coded in as constants, with a little tweaking the routine could be used for other SW files.

If any of you whizzes out there upgrades this code, plz repost :)

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Private Const INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE = -1 Private Const FILE_ATTRIBUTE_DIRECTORY = &H10 Private Const BIF_RETURNONLYFSDIRS = &H1 Private Const MAX_PATH = 260 Private Const DWG_SEARCHSPEC As String = ".SLDDRW" Private Const DOC_EXPORT_EXTENSION As String = ".PDF"

Private Type FILETIME dwLowDateTime As Long dwHighDateTime As Long End Type

Private Type WIN32_FIND_DATA dwFileAttributes As Long ftCreationTime As FILETIME ftLastAccessTime As FILETIME ftLastWriteTime As FILETIME nFileSizeHigh As Long nFileSizeLow As Long dwReserved0 As Long dwReserved1 As Long cFileName As String * MAX_PATH cAlternate As String * 14 End Type

Private Declare Function FindFirstFile Lib "kernel32" Alias _ "FindFirstFileA" (ByVal lpFileName As String, lpFindFileData As _ WIN32_FIND_DATA) As Long Private Declare Function FindNextFile Lib "kernel32" Alias _ "FindNextFileA" (ByVal hFindFile As Long, lpFindFileData As _ WIN32_FIND_DATA) As Long Private Declare Function FindClose Lib "kernel32" (ByVal hFindFile As _ Long) As Long

Private Declare Function GetDesktopWindow Lib "user32" () As Long Private Declare Function SHGetPathFromIDList Lib "shell32.dll" Alias _ "SHGetPathFromIDListA" (ByVal pidl As Long, ByVal pszPath As String) _ As Long Private Declare Function SHBrowseForFolder Lib "shell32.dll" Alias _ "SHBrowseForFolderA" (lpBrowseInfo As BROWSEINFO) As Long Private Declare Sub CoTaskMemFree Lib "ole32.dll" (ByVal pv As Long)

Function BrowseForFolder(WindowTitle As String) As String ' call the Browse for folders dialog Dim bi As BROWSEINFO Dim pidl As Long Dim path As String Dim pos As Integer bi.hOwner = GetDesktopWindow ' get hwnd of desktop bi.pidlRoot = 0 'Pointer to the item identifier list bi.lpszTitle = WindowTitle 'message displayed in Browse dialog bi.ulFlags = BIF_RETURNONLYFSDIRS 'the type of folder to return. pidl = SHBrowseForFolder(bi) 'show the browse for folders dialog path = Space$(MAX_PATH) 'parse the user's returned folder 'selection contained in pidl If SHGetPathFromIDList(ByVal pidl, ByVal path) Then pos = InStr(path, Chr$(0)) BrowseForFolder = Left(path, pos - 1) End If Call CoTaskMemFree(pidl) End Function

Public Sub FindFiles(strRootFolder As String, strFolder As String, _ strFile As String) Dim lngSearchHandle As Long Dim udtFindData As WIN32_FIND_DATA Dim strTemp As String, lngRet As Long Dim UCaseExt As String UCaseExt = UCase$(Right$(strFile, Len(strFile) - 1)) 'Check that folder name ends with "\" If Right$(strRootFolder, 1) "\" Then strRootFolder = strRootFolder & "\" End If 'Find first file/folder in current folder lngSearchHandle = FindFirstFile(strRootFolder & "*", udtFindData) 'Check that we received a valid handle If lngSearchHandle = INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE Then Exit Sub lngRet = 1 Do While lngRet 0 'Trim nulls from filename strTemp = TrimNulls(udtFindData.cFileName) If (udtFindData.dwFileAttributes And FILE_ATTRIBUTE_DIRECTORY) _ = FILE_ATTRIBUTE_DIRECTORY Then 'It's a dir - make sure it isn't . or .. dirs If strTemp "." And strTemp ".." Then 'It's a normal dir: let's dive straight into it... Call FindFiles(strRootFolder & strTemp, strFolder, _ strFile) ', colFilesFound) End If Else 'It's a file. First check if the current folder matches ' the folder path in strFolder If (strRootFolder Like strFolder) Then 'Folder matches, what about file? ext$ = Right(strTemp, Len(UCaseExt)) If UCase(ext$) = UCaseExt Then FileCount = FileCount + 1 ReDim Preserve FoundPath(0 To FileCount) ReDim Preserve FoundFiles(0 To FileCount) FoundPath(FileCount) = strRootFolder FoundFiles(FileCount) = strTemp ' list in debug window Debug.Print strRootFolder & strTemp End If End If End If 'Get next file/folder lngRet = FindNextFile(lngSearchHandle, udtFindData) Loop 'Close find handle Call FindClose(lngSearchHandle) End Sub

Public Function TrimNulls(strString As String) As String Dim l As Long l = InStr(1, strString, Chr(0)) If l = 1 Then TrimNulls = "" ElseIf l > 0 Then TrimNulls = Left$(strString, l - 1) Else TrimNulls = strString End If End Function

Sub main() Dim retpath As String Dim DialogText As String Const swDocDRAWING As Long = 3 Const swOpenDocOptions_Silent As Long = 1 Const swOpenDocOptions_ReadOnly As Long = 2 Const swSaveAsOptions_Silent As Long = 1 Const swSaveAsOptions_AvoidRebuildOnSave As Long = 8 Dim ErrCode As Long Dim PathSpec As String Dim Errors As Long, Warnings As Long Dim OpenOptions As Long, ExportOptions As Long Dim OpenDwgObj As ModelDoc2 Dim ExportFileSpec As String Set swApp = Application.SldWorks ' attach to existing SW If swApp Is Nothing Then MsgBox "Solidworks must be running to use this macro", 65, _ "PDF Export" Exit Sub End If DialogText = "Select Base Folder for .SldDrw search." & vbCrLf DialogText = DialogText & "Program will recurse all child folders" retpath = BrowseForFolder(DialogText) If retpath > "" Then FileCount = -1: Erase FoundFiles ' clear previous search ' and find a new batch Call FindFiles(retpath, "*", "*" & DWG_SEARCHSPEC) If FileCount = -1 Then MsgBox "No Files matching the extension " & vbCrLf & _ DWG_SEARCHSPEC & " found to export" Else DialogText = FileCount + 1 & _ " Files matching the extension " & vbCrLf DialogText = DialogText & DWG_SEARCHSPEC & _ " found to export." & vbCrLf & vbCrLf DialogText = DialogText & _ "Would you like to export these PDFs now ?" retcode% = MsgBox(DialogText, 36, "Export PDFs") If retcode = 6 Then ' user wants to export PDFs ' Boolean OR the Doc options OpenOptions = swOpenDocOptions_Silent Or _ swOpenDocOptions_ReadOnly ExportOptions = swSaveAsOptions_Silent Or _ swSaveAsOptions_AvoidRebuildOnSave ' loop thru and open SW Drawings For Doc& = 0 To FileCount ' generate path PathSpec = FoundPath(Doc&) & FoundFiles(Doc&) ' open the doc Set OpenDwgObj = swApp.OpenDoc6(PathSpec, _ swDocDRAWING, Options, "", Errors, Warnings) If Not (OpenDwgObj Is Nothing) Then ' generate new Name for export ExportFileSpec = Left$(PathSpec, Len(PathSpec) - _ Len(DWG_SEARCHSPEC)) ExportFileSpec = ExportFileSpec & _ DOC_EXPORT_EXTENSION Debug.Print ExportFileSpec OpenDwgObj.SaveAs4 ExportFileSpec, 0, _ ExportOptions, Errors, Warnings DocTitle$ = OpenDwgObj.GetTitle swApp.CloseDoc DocTitle$ Set OpenDwgObj = Nothing End If Next Doc& ' End If End If End If End Sub

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Timely piece ! I Appreciate the information . Does someone know if I might obtain a template 2011 DD 577 version to work with ?