nx9 macros and journals

[engmaster]

When I updated from nx8.5 to nx9 my macros no longer worked. With nx8.5 I simply recorded my menu selections to create the macro. Here is an example of one of my macros: select and existing dimension, then run the macro to change the font, size, add parenthesis, etc. I have recreated the macro in nx9 but keep getting the message "...Has the macro been played back from a different state? Has the dialog been modified?"

any suggestions? Thanks.

windows7
nx9.0.1.3

 

[JohnRBaker]

Ever since their introduction, keystroke-macros have ALWAYS been susceptible to failure when moving from one release to the next, due to the fact that they depend on there being NO changes whatsoever to ANY of the options found on a UG/NX dialog. And this includes where a function is found on a pull-down menu or which toolbar it's being called from. As I've alluded to, 'macros' are nothing more than a 'recording' of the keystrokes or buttons that were pushed and the values that were entered into a text widget or parameter box when the macro was recorded.

Now the last time there was a wholesale 'destruction' of macros was when we introduced NX 5.0 with the new 'block-based' dialogs. Most every macro created prior to NX 5.0 was useless after that. Your only choice to either create new macros or start using the new 'Journalizing' function which was enabled by the new style of dialogs. A 'Journal' does NOT capture keystrokes as it were but rather actual calls to the functions executed. The good news is that journals are much less prone to failure when upgrading to a new release since even if we make changes to the dialog as long as the underlying functional call did not change the journal will be usable. Also, journals are easier to edit since you can actually identify what it being done and what it being entered, while if you were to open a macro in a text editor there is no way to know what command it was recording or what most any of the entries were being used for. Now macros did have one advantage over journals and that is that with virtally ALL UG/NX menus and dialogs you could create and playback macros since all it was doing was capturing the keystrokes that you hit and the values that you entered. Journals, on the other hand, depend on the dialog being what we call 'journalble', that is that it has be created using the tools needed to make their use understood by the journal capture mechanism. Basically this meant that the dialog had to use the new 'blcok-based' tools introduced with NX 5.0. Unfortunately not every dialog was updated with NX 5.0 and even today there are still a few obscure places where we have yet to replace an old pre-NX 5.0 style dialog with a new one but we're getting closer with each new release of NX and eventually they will ALL be replaced with modern journalable dialogs.

Now I mentioned that the last time there was a major disruption in being able to use older macros was the release of NX 5.0. Well the latest one is NX 9.0. As you can imagine, with the new ribbon UI, we have changed at least the first action taken when launching virtually EVERY dialog in NX, even if the dialog itself has not changed in NX 9.0, any pre-NX 9.0 macro will fail (macros still worked with the new NX 5.0 block-based dialogs but with the same restrictions and limitations) because there wasn't a menu or toolbar to launch the dialog from and this is part of what the macro recorded and what it's now trying to 'playback'.

Now I don't really want to tell you this, but there is one thing that you could try. You could switch NX back to using the 'Classic' interface (menus and toolbars) which might allow your macros to now run, as long as there were no changes at the dialog level. Now before you do that I must warn you that we've already announced that NX 11.0 will be the last version of NX that will support both the ribbon UI and the 'Classic' UI. This also means that for all intents and purposes, macros will be all but dead at that time. Therfore while this 'trick' I suggested might gain you some time or help you avoid having create all new macros, it will only get you buy for now. You really should be looking to replacing your macros with journals as that now is, more so than ever, the go-forward solution for simple automation of NX tasks.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
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To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[engmaster]

Thanks JRB for the info. It confirmed what I already thought was happening. I did try using the classic interface but that did not work very well. And I wanted to continue using the new interface anyway. You are right about macros vs journals. I don't mind recreating new journals but I have already tried and have not had the same measure of success as with the previous macro creation. I guess I will just have to continue learning about journals. Thanks.