Questions on Learning VB and Snap

[Kenja824]

I have been on here often asking for VB code help as I have been trying to figure this stuff out on my own. I did not even have Visual Studio to help. You might imagine, it got pretty frustrating for me.

To my understanding, once our company upgrades from NX8 to whatever version they decide to move to in the future, that Macros will not work anymore. So any buttons I have created in years past with Macros will stop working for us. Am I right on this?

My belief in this has pushed me to try and switch all of our macro ran buttons to Journal code buttons. Which I know very little about. I have managed (with a lot of help from here) to get over half of them switched over, but my frustrations finally got the best of me so I found the "SNAP - Getting Started" guide and the "SNAP Manual" and started from the beginning. I have gone through several examples and now have gotten to one that says I need the Snap Author License to do it. I have no idea how much this costs, if I should get it at this level of learning, etc...

My Questions...
Should I bother requesting the company to purchase a Snap Author License or should I wait until I am much further along?

If in the future I write a code that needs the Snap Author License, and I make a button with it. Will someone else in the company who does not have the license still be able to use the button?

I am currently going through examples in the Getting Started guide. Should I continue with that and just skip past the examples that need the license, or should I be reading the Snap Manual first?

Any advice is appreciated.

 

[markrief]

You idea to move from macros to journals is good.

Users should not need an author license to run a journal - only the licenses for the functionality used by the journal.

For more information, I suggest looking at the samples in the UGOPEN folder, searching the knowledge base in TAC (formerly UGANSWER), and being active in the Siemens NX programming forum in addition to this one.

Mark Rief
NX CAM Customer Success
Siemens PLM Software

 

[Kenja824]

Users should not need an author license to run a journal - only the licenses for the functionality used by the journal.

Forgive me but this confuses me a bit. If I make a journal that has a function to it, that needs the Snap Author License to create it. Wouldn't someone who runs that journal then need the Author license in order for the journal to complete that function?

Or is the license only for creating the journal and not needed for running it?

 

[BubbaK]

Roughly speaking, the authoring license allows you to create journals/programs. I say "roughly" because actually what the authoring license gives you is the ability to "sign" a compiled program.

When someone runs one of your journals, licenses get consumed according to the functions used in the program. So, if your code calls a drafting function, a drafting license will be consumed. No authoring license is needed to run a journal/program.

If you have worked through the SNAP tutorial, and have replicated a few old macros, then you probably have some understanding of the value of programming. So, you could probably make an intelligent decision about whether it's worth buying a SNAP license. I don't know how much it costs, but I think it's the least expensive authoring license. A lot less than NX/Open or even GRIP. SNAP doesn't do everything that NX/Open does, but it's a lot less expensive, and it does simple things very easily. After you get a bit more experience, you can decide whether it's worth spending more money on an NX/Open authoring license.