BATCH OUT PDF FILES ? 1

[jkcone]

Hello
Does anyone know if it's possible to "batch" export/print PDF files of all NX6 drawings in an assembly or folder?

James

 

[looslib]

Possible, probably. There used to be a batch program that would do it in the pre-NX days but it was written for GRIP and used VMS DCL for the OS side of the program.


"Wildfires are dangerous, hard to control, and economically catastrophic."

Ben Loosli

 

[JohnRBaker]

There have been several programs written recently by customer to do just that, and at least one of them is now participating in this forum, but you will have to wait until the sun raises down in 'OZ' before he will see this inquiry.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Design Solutions
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA

http://www.siemens.com/plm

http://www.plmworld.org/museum/

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[jkcone]

I'll be happy to wait for Mr. OZy

Thanks,
James

 

[FrankSwinks]

Before I start on such a program attached is a windows program that allows one to edit NX part attributes. Place the file FileAttributes.exe in your UGII\managed directory. Then open the NX command window and execute FileAttributes. The program allows you to edit part attributes without opening them in a NX session.

If this works for you I propose a program that would allow you to select a directory or an assembly. The program would list all the parts which it would cycle through showing in turn the drawing sheets (as a list) which are being worked on to create the PDF files. Before programming I would need some more info regarding location and pdf file naming.

Frank Swinkels

 

[jkcone]

FrankSwinks,
Thanks for the attachment.
I placed "FileAttributes.exe" in my "UGII" folder & double clicked it. Immediately Windows came up with a error message "exattributes" had quit working. I'm running a 64bit OS, could that be the problem?

James

 

[cowski]

Batch export of pdf files looks like an interesting problem. I'd like to work on it, but it will be sometime next week at the earliest that I'll be able to contribute - I'm currently up to my eyeballs in data migration.

p.s. I'm not the wizard of OZ that John alluded to, so this may be taken care of by someone more experienced before I'm even able to start looking at it. In which case I look forward to seeing the solution.

 

[jkcone]

Thanks Mr. OZ ... I mean cowski. I do appreciate the effort & experience you guy are sharing.

James

 

[FrankSwinks]

jkcone

You need to place it in the managed sub directory of UGII. Also you now need to open a NX command line window. It should open to .../UGII/managed dir. Now you can execute FileAttribute.exe from the command window. It is compiled for NX7.5 64bit.

Frank Swinkels (in OZ)

 

[jkcone]

Hi Frank
I moved fileattributes.exe to the managed directory (like I was supposed to in the first place) & lunched it from the NX command line window as you instructed. I still get the Windows error message "exattributes has stopped working". You mentioned it was compiled for NX7.5 64bit. I'm running NX6 32bit. Do you think that could be my problem?

James

 

[looslib]

That is the problem. Compiled programs must be run in the system for which they were compiled for. NX libraries may have changed between NX6 and NX7.5. Also the version of compiler may have changed.


"Wildfires are dangerous, hard to control, and economically catastrophic."

Ben Loosli

 

[jkcone]

Frank / looslib,
I know very little about this. What program was used to "compile' "fileattributes.exe".

James

 

[looslib]

I can only make a guess, but that would be MS Visual Studio.
The program is either written in C or C++.
It is hen linked with object libraries that come with each version of NX.


"Wildfires are dangerous, hard to control, and economically catastrophic."

Ben Loosli

 

[jkcone]

Thanks for the info looslib,

James

 

[FrankSwinks]

jkcone

Attached is the FileAttributesNX6.exe program. I have compiled it using NX6 libraries. I am not prepared to configure my system for NX6 so I have not been able to verify the program. Let me know if it works.

Frank Swinkels

 

[jkcone]

Thanks Frank for taking the time to re-compile this for NX6.
I afraid though I'm getting the same error with this file as well.
A couple thinks I though might be the problem. First I'm running NX6 32bit. Was it compiled for 64 or 32 bit NX6? Second when I start the NX command line window the first line says "MSVCDir" is not configured so I change directory to the "managed" directory & launch fileattributesnx6.exe from there. Could the MSVCDir
not being set cause a problem?

James

 

[FrankSwinks]

James

It is not necessary to have MSVCDir set. I set up an additional command line window configured to totally ignore everything except command line window access to NX.

I have NX6 located at C:\ugs\NX6

The command line dialog properties are:

Target: C:\WINDOWS\system32\cmd.exe /k C:\ugs\NX6\UGII\ugiicmd.bat "C:\ugs\NX6"

Start in: C:\ugs\NX6\UGII\managed

In C:\ugs\NX6\UGII\ugiicmd.bat I have remarked out everything except:

set base=%1
set base_dir=%base:"=%
set UGII_BASE_DIR=%base_dir%
set UGII_ROOT_DIR=%base_dir%\UGII\
set PATH=%base_dir%\ugii;%PATH%

That is %1 becomes C:\ugs\NX6

This works for me when I run FileAttributesNX6 from the command line prompt.

Just in case, I have recompiled with the 32 bit library files for NX6. I have also signed the program. Hope this is enough information to now have it work for you.

Frank

 

[cowski]

jkcone,

Are you still working on this or has it been taken care of?

I may have some time this week to work on it if needed.

 

[FrankSwinks]

I have not done any more on this. I was waiting on a response regarding the windows attributes edit program. If my approach is of no use then I see no value of doing work on the pdf program.

Frank Swinkels

 

[jkcone]

Thanks guys for your continued help.

Frank, I realy wanted to see how your FileAttributesNX6.exe worked but I was unable to get it to work. Probably due to my lack of computer expertise. But I don't understand what this program has to do with a batch pdf export program. What am I missing?

Cowski, I've made no headway on a pdf batch export program. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated. I'd offer to help but I don't know where to start.

Thanks again, looking forward to your help.
James