nice job ! Bob Looney PMI/ISCO Bend, OR 97702
-----Original Message----- From: Lauzus, Frederick [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, April 26, 2000 10:30 AM To: Manhart, Martin; SmartCAM Email Group Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [mfg-smartcam] External program enhancements The concept I'm using is to have SmartCAM do as little as possible and let VB do all the hard work. I use the macro language to extract information and pass it to a VB program via a ASCII data file. The VB program then processes the information and passes the result back to SmartCAM via a SmartCAM macro file. With most of the work done in VB, it will be easier for me to transfer all my customizations to whatever system I choose to replace SmartCAM when the time comes. I have a wide variety of VB projects ranging from simple to monstrous. Most of them are specific to our industry and would be of no use to others. I do have a few that are more general purpose as described below. !!!!!!!!WARNING!!!!!!!!! THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION CONTAINS LARGE VOLUMES OF TECHNO-BABBLE! Reading this should not be attempted by the technically impaired without appropriate medication available. This is a description of a "simple" program. It is similar to what you described for getting user names. This one however writes to the planner not the code file. A macro calls the VB program using the SHELL command. The VB program runs transparently to the user and the SHELL command is set to force SmartCAM to wait for the VB program to finish before processing any additional commands. The VB program retrieves the current user login, which for our company is always the first initial followed by the last name (i.e. "jsmith"). The VB program then separates the first letter from the rest of the log in name with a period and a space and adjusts the case of the letters accordingly (i.e. "J. Smith"). The VB then writes a temporary SmartCAM macro file in the same directory as the macro. This temporary file contains the macro commands to place the current user name (i.e. "J. Smith") in the Creator field of the Job Info section of the Planner. When the VB program ends, control is returned to the original SmartCAM macro which then runs the temporary macro using the MAC_EXE[] command. This all takes less than a second and can be called from within any other macro. This is a brief description of my "monster" program. It is a customized printing routine for tool information, graphics and code. The basic requirements were as follows: 1) Use the old DOS style Job Plan format, but include additional new text fields from Job Info section 2) Combine all information, Job info, Step info, part graphics and the G code file, into a single print job. 3) Allow the re-mapping of colors for printing the layers and tools displayed (to eliminate light colors on white paper). 4) Allow control of the line thickness'. 5) Have a print preview screen. 6) Allow background printing of all information with a single icon click 7) Automatically use landscape orientation for graphics and portrait for text. There's too much more too list. It' seems the more features I build into it, the more features the programmers want (I know you SDRC boys can relate to this). I've attached a few screen shots of the print preview screens. As for what we make, our products are primarily prefabricated steel bridge components and steel members for large civil structures. We burn contours with both Oxy-fuel and plasma cutters, mill, drill, punch and turn. No rivets though. Everything today is either welded or bolted. We currently have a lot of steel going to the "Big Dig" central artery project in Boston and the JFK Airport expansion in New York. The name High Steel is coincidental. High is the family name of our founder. Check out our web site at http://www.highsteel.com if you'd like more information. � ============================================= Fred Lauzus, CAM Programming Coordinator High Steel Structures, Incorporated mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.highsteel.com ============================================= -----Original Message----- From: Manhart, Martin [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, April 26, 2000 8:13 AM To: 'Lauzus, Frederick'; SmartCAM Email Group Subject: RE: [mfg-smartcam] External program enhancements Hi Fred, I am curious as to what can be done with Visual Basic or other programming languages in regards to SmartCam, could you give us a few examples with out giving away too many trade secrets? Are you shelling out and gathering parameters and/or doing logic and passing this info back to a SmartCam macro or actually massaging the pm4 file itself? The fanciest thing we here have ever done was to shell out to the system and get the current NT user's log in name and put it in the coded file so the machine operators know whom to blame for a bad program. Also I am curious in regards to your company name, do you use SmartCam for machining the large steel beams in skyscrapers? Do you drill the rivet holes, mill compound angles on the ends and such? Thanks, Marty > -----Original Message----- > From: Lauzus, Frederick [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > Sent: Thursday, April 20, 2000 11:01 AM > To: SmartCAM Email Group > Subject: [mfg-smartcam] External program enhancements > > > I'm just curious. Is anyone else on the list server group adding > enhancements to SmartCAM with Visual Basic or another > programming languages? > > > ============================================= > Fred Lauzus, CAM Programming Coordinator > High Steel Structures, Incorporated > mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.highsteel.com > ============================================= > > ====================================================================== > To find out more about this mailing list including how to unsubscribe, > send the message "info mfg-smartcam" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] > ====================================================================== > ====================================================================== To find out more about this mailing list including how to unsubscribe, send the message "info mfg-smartcam" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] ======================================================================
