CREO MAPKEYS / Automation

[jzecha]

I come from a Catia background and have written Macros in Catia in various formats (CATScript, VBS, and VBA).
I am wanting to know what is the best way to write Macros in CREO?

I have started to play around with Mapkeys, but it seems to be pretty slow compared to the scripting engines in Catia.

For Example, I need to automate a text box I put on my drawing for every detail I draft.
The text i want to put in is the following:

&model_name
&DESCRIPTION
SCALE:&scale
QTY: X

The first 3 lines pull values from the part I am drafting.
I would also like to change the font size to .375".

 

[3DDave]

See

https://community.ptc.com/t5/System-Administration/de-re-Mapkeys/m-p/445651

https://community.ptc.com/t5/System-Administration/Mapkey-Writing-Editing-Tips/m-p/443729

https://community.ptc.com/t5/System...-files-for-Creo-Parametric-and-Pro/m-p/451745

Note that because PTC has ruined their community by failed attempts to move to ever cheaper platforms a lot of links are broken. The pages exist and using the search box will usually find them; they got the pages moved, just didn't pay to fix the links.

 

[jzecha]

Is there any other way for automation other than Mapkeys?
I am finding it is being very tempermental.

 

[3DDave]

PTC has never created a user-friendly automation method. They have JLINK, WebLINK, and Toolkit. The first two are free, but don't give access to all the elements in Creo. The closest right now is CREOSON.

My preference was AutoIt, a general purpose automation language that allows manipulating most anything in a Windows environment, however PTC has worked to keep such automation not working. Since PTC cannot prevent all user interactions AutoIt can still be used; I would create simple mapkeys to handle the elements that AutoIt cannot see and then use AutoIt to run the mapkeys.

The main thing with creating usable mapkeys is to avoid picking things from lists as much as possible as Creo records the item pick and not the item that is picked. So if you record picking the 3rd item, that's what will get chosen when the mapkey is run again.

Best of luck.