Posted: 15 February 2008 at 2:26pm | IP Logged

Have you looked into Pro/Web.Link? Pro/Web.Link is available in Pro/E as well and is a bit easier to program and setup, because it uses HTML & JavaScript. Certainly Web.Link can handle the automation of Pro/E stuff and PDF printing, etc.

As far as the issue of having Pro/E automatically open via the web portal you may have to look into that one seperately as I am not certain if there is a way to launch Pro/E in the background using Pro/Web.Link but it is possible to do (maybe do that portion using another method then activate the Pro/E stuff via Web.Link).

Another thought might be just having the customer go to webportal and enter in the variables into webpage which then could be output to a text and/or data file on the network that a designer could then import into a running session of Pro/E and directly into a Pro/Web.Link page. This may also be better in case your script failed for some reason thus not affectively outputting back to the customer on the webportal. You could simply take the customer's e-mail address via a webportal form and e-mail them the resulting PDF and BOM output afterwards. It's a slightly manual process, but one that just about anyone could handle even a non-designer/engineer. Just a thought.

Posted: 17 February 2008 at 11:11pm | IP Logged

Thanks Mr. G Cook

I learnt from PTC guys that weblink is only used in intralink and this cannot be used for interlinlking with webportal. In their view J-link is the most preffered way of connecting Pro/e and web-portal. I am still not clear, which one we have to use for interlinking.

Reg

Kumar

kumar@cessnatech.com

Posted: 18 February 2008 at 9:21am | IP Logged

I believe when you are referring to "Intralink" you mean "Pro/Intralink". If so the people you talked to ("PTC guys") are not correct.

Jlink and Pro/Web.Link are both API's that are built on top of the Pro/Toolkit capabilities of Pro/Engineer. Pro/Intralink is a databasing and workgroup software to manage the files created by Pro/E. Pro/Web.Link has nothing to do with Pro/Intralink (generally speaking). You can use Pro/Web.Link without Pro/Intralink. In fact, i've been doing that everyday (both with and without Intralink) to do other types of tasks, like automating 3D model and drawing tasks.

As far as using Jlink...I'm not saying that you couldn't use it...I'm just saying that since Pro/Web.Link is based on html & javascript & is easier to use that it makes most sense to use it for your application.

With the exception of the launching Pro/E portion of your example (which I'm not certain can't be done), Pro/Web.Link can certainly handle the other stuff you asked for it to do, so I thought it would be a viable solution for you to consider. In fact I think its something I would strongly recommend you look into further.

Of course maybe I misunderstood your meaning of "webportal" also, but I'm assuming I have that right at least.

Posted: 19 February 2008 at 8:34am | IP Logged

I did similar for a stair case manufacturer using Outlook Macros, and a special codeword email. Did full on cutting lists, production drawings, solid models ( assembly files ) etc.

This then forwarded a PDF after running a Trail File I'd written.

It was relatively easy to do, and seemed to be stable enough, though I think I'll get jip on this forum for suggesting such a method!

-AS

Posted: 19 February 2008 at 10:56pm | IP Logged

Thanks Mr. Cook and Mr. Andysuth,

I will explore the possibilities in J-link and Weblink.

Thanks

Reg

Kumar

Posted: 20 February 2008 at 5:26am | IP Logged

Let us know how you get on, this strand may be stumbled across by someone with a similar problem in the future, and it would help them if you say how oyu achieved the solution.

-AS

Posted: 23 February 2008 at 12:23am | IP Logged

Hi, AS

I am trying and let you know, once I complete

Posted: 16 April 2008 at 9:20am | IP Logged

J-Link documentation and examples can be found in the "jlink" folder
in the Pro/ENGINEER install.  There is a PDF file containing all of
the documentation, but the web based docs (in the jlinkdoc folder)
are much more useful.  Some of the J-Link classes are well documented,
others only minimally, but the amount of examples is low.

Here's an article by J.D. Felkins about J-Link:
  http://www.profilesmagazine.com/p39/felkins.html