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Starting Pro/ENGINEER

apilikov

New member
hi all.


I have a problem. ProE isn't a ussual CAD. There is everything unique in it. And now I don't know how to start ProE without having an executable or bat-file path to it. And here is the question I want to ask the community... is there another way to start proe? Because know I have to ask the user of my application to specify this path. Help please... ))
 
Apilikov,


What you are describing is called an asynchronous application that uses ProE as a tool. The executabel starts ProE and is a parent to that process. You must use the function ProEngineerStart to accomplish this. However you must know that this method (as opposed to a synchronous dll) is much slower. This is because all of the Pro/TOOLKIT function calls must go through a dispatching application called pro_comm_msg.exe. If you want to know more www.frotime.com has a tutorial explaining this concept.
 
williaps


I understand you words, but I asked not about asynchronous mode and function ProEngineerStart . I have non-toolkit app and Toolkit App which is working in synchro mode with proe. Non-toolkit app calls functions of toolkit app. But as you understand before I can call any function I should start the proe from non-toolkit app. And here is the problem. I need the executable path to perfom this operation. And by the way function ProEngineerStart also needs an executable path. Somode choosing doesn't fix this problem. I always need the path.
 
I understand now. The batch file method is the only way you can start Pro/ENGINEER from a non-toolkit application. You might want to interrogate the registry if you know the build and version of Pro that is installed on the machine.


HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\PTC\Pro/ENGINEER\Wildfire 2.0\2005380


There is the InstallDir value in there and you can devise the batch file path from there.
 
williaps said:
I understand now. The batch file method is the only way you can start Pro/ENGINEER from a non-toolkit application. You might want to interrogate the registry if you know the build and version of Pro that is installed on the machine.


HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\PTC\Pro/ENGINEER\Wildfire 2.0\2005380


There is the InstallDir value in there and you can devise the batch file path from there.


Of course Yes it is. But there are now path containing "exe"or "bat" string. And my non-toolkit appmust "guess" what file name to concatenate to this path. Isn't it?
 
I'm not sure. With Wildfire there is now a proe.exe which is a generic start program. It will read the psf files in the bin directory and show a dialog box with the different Pro/E startup configurations. I have not tried to use this executable in ProEngineerStart but I would be interested to see if it works.
 
williaps said:
I'm not sure. With Wildfire there is now a proe.exe which is a generic start program. It will read the psf files in the bin directory and show a dialog box with the different Pro/E startup configurations. I have not tried to use this executable in ProEngineerStart but I would be interested to see if it works.


Actually if I'll get the release from registry I can concatenate different file names depending on release. And then feed it to CreateProcess Win32 API function. I think this must work.
 
You will have to use RegEnumKeyEx to iterate through all the datecodes of Pro/Engineer that are installed. Otherwise your application will only work with 2005380 (M170) for example.
 

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