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Poor man’s where-used

jbuckl said:
This is a great thread....


Many project manager types love excel to 'do everything'....


Is there a way to write an excel sheet that associatively interrogates a pro-e assembly file and outputs a bill of material?


I drove to work this morning planning to ask this question and


Also, where do you learn to write the necessary code?
 
excel macros......arent they written in ms/vb?


Where can I learn this ?


So far the excel sheet hasnt given me what I want ......but......its not far off being a very powerful tool to list files in a pro e assy....


Big daddy,


can the excel be written so that the path is not just the directory, but the actual .asm file?


Regards


Jbuckl
 
jbuckl and jelston,


I began playing around with the VB code inside Excel about 10 years ago. Never took a course, just used the help files and some problem solving to make it do what I wanted. I'm not a programmer by trade, so I confess I'm poor on the commenting side of things and the code is probably pretty rough.


As for the Assembly BOM question, please see attached updated file. The information was already there in the original file, once the update is done...just needed to be extracted into a BOM format.I added a new tab that will let you look at any of the BOMs and also compare two to each other (different versions to see what might have changed). Try it out.2008-06-12_110546_Intralink_w_bom.zip
 
Wow thanks for looking at this so quickly B D!


By the way is there another name for you like 'msvbpro' guru?
smiley36.gif
 
bigdaddy said:
If you open an assembly or drawing file from Explorer using Word or Wordpad, you can see that there is a mix of readable characters and ASCII or other characters.


Do you know of a way to modify these assembly files with a text editor or through a program?


Actually, I've seen .asm files that were strictly text files - they were created from STEP files downloaded from manufacturers. These are able to be modified via Notepad etc.. The binary (or whatever) files are another story.
 
Back in the good old days (pre-Wildchild), Pro/E files were pure text. It was possible to go into assembly & drawing files with a text editor and do a global search & replace of a part name. Must have cut into Intralink sales too much so PTC put a stop to it.

There is another utility that was posted on this forum awhile back that works well for finding out where a part or assembly is used. It doesn't compile a data base but it can search multiple folders. Do a search for findmymother.

When it was posted I didn't see the need for it because I could accomplish the same thing with a windows explorer search window but something has changed & that doesn't work for me like it used to.
 
dr_gallup said:
Back in the good old days (pre-Wildchild), Pro/E files were pure text. It was possible to go into assembly & drawing files with a text editor and do a global search & replace of a part name. Must have cut into Intralink sales too much so PTC put a stop to it.


Yes, that was my reason for looking at assembly files. My company now has a second part database besides Intralink - I was trying to come up with a home-grown single solution that would work for everyone.
 
If you edit the files now you will throw off the checksum and Pro/E will tell you it can't open the file or it is corrupt.
 
Nay! Hand editing the model files was causing too much havoc. That tactic had to go. And good riddance.


dr_gallup said:
Back in the good old days (pre-Wildchild), Pro/E files were pure text. It was possible to go into assembly & drawing files with a text editor and do a global search & replace of a part name. Must have cut into Intralink sales too much so PTC put a stop to it.
 
gkbeer said:
Nay! Hand editing the model files was causing too much havoc. That tactic had to go. And good riddance.


dr_gallup said:
Back in the good old days (pre-Wildchild), Pro/E files were pure text. It was possible to go into assembly & drawing files with a text editor and do a global search & replace of a part name. Must have cut into Intralink sales too much so PTC put a stop to it.

It worked for me many a time (when someone else renamed the file naturally, I could never make such a mistake).
 
We have a utility that take the names form one folder (library, instances and generics) and searches a folder structure recursively and creates a
 
Do you have means to make a program similar to the one that makes the thumbnails but instead have one that makes pdfs of all the drawings in directory?
 
Thanks guys these are some great utilities. I have one more request.


Currently I am manually transferring around 6000 filesinto PDMLink. To do this I am opening up each drawing (so it pulls the part) and then saving each one into a workspace and then importing them into the PDMLink server to each desired folder. The continuous open-save-close-open process is quite tedious and time consuming.


I was wondering if anyone would be willing to put together a batch file or excel program that could automate this for me so that I could take a folder of files and have it automatically run through this open and save process into PDMLink.


Any help would be greatly appreciated, Thanks in advance!
 
servo313,


Try this one (2008-06-27_090216_PDMLINK_converter.zip). Just tweaked a little from the pdf converter. Enter your source directory in the file, then create the mapkey.


Open Pro/E, log into your PDMLink. Create your new workspace. Make sure override_store_back is set to yes and save_objects is set to all.


Load the mapkey file pdmconvert.pro, then type **pdm. It will open each of the drawing files from the source location, save them in the current, close, erase not displayed.


-shawn
 
Thanks Shawn...

I am currently having a problem getting the map key to load, do you load it where your config flie is? I got it to work one, but the drawings I had were from a student edition not a commercial edition. I tried it again with loading it as you would a new config file but am having no luck getting it to recognize the map key.

Thanks again..

Chris




Edited by: servo313
 
Chris,


The mapkey file will be saved in the folder you specify in step 6.


Also, make sure your source path is in the correct format, with "\" at the end and everything correct.


If you want, you can try this one out (2008-06-27_123757_PDMLINK_converter2.zip). I just added the settings that I mentioned before into the actual mapkey. If it is still having problems, try recording a mapkey as you are manually opening, saving, etc. Then send it over.


-shawn
 
Shawn-

I think I am making this more difficult then it needs to be...

I can create the pdmconvert.pro file no problem. I am just not to sure what to do with it after its created. I am not sure how to 'load' it because when I do load it I get the screenshot I showed above and then when I type in the map key to activate it nothing happens...


Edited by: servo313
 

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