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Well, I guess if Rick will admit ignorance, I can
jump right in too. Here it is......What is VB?????
Dont all laugh at once folks, I taught myself
SmartCam and have not gone to college either.
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, April 26, 2000 2:03
PM
Subject: RE: [mfg-smartcam] External
program enhancements
God help us who are not techno-babbles. All my learning
was OJT, and no
college to back that up.
Rick
Seriously though, I sit here listening, er rather reading all this
e-mail
and feel overwhelmed with the knowledge base out in the real
world. I sure
hope I never have to go up against any of you for a
job. I would surely
lose.
And its true I never went to
college and really don't understand a lot of
what you guys talk
about. Maybe i should join a "smartcam for
dummies"
group.
-----Original Message-----
From: Brian Nelson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent:
Wednesday, April 26, 2000 1:37 PM
To: Lauzus, Frederick; Manhart, Martin;
SmartCAM Email Group
Subject: Re: [mfg-smartcam] External program
enhancements
Did you pick up VB by osmosis or did you take a
class? Can you reccomend
texts or
classes for other Techno-Babbles
who are already on drugs?
I ask for a very good
reason. The CNC CMM's I see for sale all use
mostly some
form of
VB to create path and part programs. VB is apparently
migrating
from
annoying more than software
houses.
Thanks
----- Original Message -----
From: "Lauzus,
Frederick" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Manhart, Martin"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "SmartCAM Email
Group"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, April 26,
2000 12:03 PM
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
>
=============================================
>
>
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