I have to give a huge shout out to
InspectorJester what a smart kid, with his help I was able to get a Form Editor, functioning popup at the beginning of my program to choose different ops to run inside the program. I hope he takes the time to share with everyone that does not know this. Now I myself made it look fancy, but he helped me get it to function. Thank You Jester. Not done with it yet, but there's a taste of my finally functional buttons
Ok sometime
InspectorJester will guide you through how to get your buttons to function correctly, If he for some reason misses anything. I will dumb it down for the rest of us or fill in the blanks. As for now, I can help make it look a little more presentable, but be WARNED. When you put this on other computers(CMM) or even offline. You have to redo this for every step. So I began with a Border and inside there I put 4 buttons, called them B_20, B_30 and so on. They need to be in there together. So they can relate to Jesters instructions. Save 2 copies of the form one without bitmaps and one with. The one with will be dedicated to that computer. The other one will be a setup one for other computers.
As you can see not that pretty so I found some BMP pictures of buttons online. Once you get those click on the (none) part to the right.
The Bitmap dialog pops up and find your fancy button to the left there. choose your picture.
Hit OK. and wa-la. Prettier button
Now the reason I said one copy with out bitmaps and one with. One with stays with that computer, because the bitmaps have a path to the pictures you added. If you try to use on a different computer it CRASHES PC-DMIS. <<<<shocker right. Anyways just transfer the pictures with you and create it on each individual computer. Repeat all the steps I just showed you on the next computer.
UPDATE: YOU DON'T HAVE TO CREATE 2 COPIES, AS bfire85 STATED JUST UNCHECK THE LINK BOX AND EVERYTHING STICKS
I have some recordings set up I can post a link to detailing the process.
I'm thinking YouTube? I still have to do some editing, so it won't be today, unfortunately.
Anyway, I strictly use the Form Editor to make forms.. Pretty straightforward thinking.
I'm not certain about this for those who run PC-DMIS from a custom GUI (such as through VBS, C, or otherwise); my process uses native PC-DMIS code, assignments and the like.
There have been a few posts regarding having one PC-DMIS program allow the user to choose between multiple operations, select whether or not to manually align first, and general "jumping around the program" nonsense. I love it!
So, the video I'm compiling together describes using forms to set up some buttons and the like, and choose between multiple operations.
I have to measure Blanking, Secondary, and Plating operations, depending on where the part is in the process. I'd like to not measure the blanking features if I'm measuring secondary, or skip the secondary if I'm measuring blanking. If I measure plating, I'd like to measure the whole part.
Instead of having a hundred operator comments, I wanted to have everything in a nice user interface; forms seemed the best choice.
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A cool thing about forms is you can set defaults. For example, you're the only programmer. You'd like to have your clock number, name, or what have you run every time; it'd be tedious to re-enter it
every time.
Or, you're testing the program, and you're not going to change how the form is set up. Why re-enter it every time if you don't have to?
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Anyways, that's a lot of talk from me and not a lot of substance. I'll be working on posting everything, drafting up some nice little paragraph or something, in the coming days (as I don't have them with me today )
Also, interesting note about the buttons
KIRBSTER269; I'll have to try that. Mine are rather boring!
When adding a BMP to the Form Editor, uncheck the LINK button. That way it stores it in the FORM and you don't need to transfer pictures from one computer to another.
FORMS are fun! Here is standard one of mine. (Took the company name out). I also have a standard one for looped programs. The drop down has about 7 different scenarios the operator can choose from for selecting the purpose of inspection. The Inspection, Op Name, and Part Info are required fields and are tied to TRACEFIELDS in my report header & DataPage. The operator cannot continue until those required fields are filled. The Additional Comments section is an optional field that will be tied to a comment at the top of the report.
Well I didn't even notice that check box. Thanks
bfire85. I guess my question why would that even be an option. You're going to the trouble of adding a picture and you might not want it there? that's what the clear button does. Anyways I will update this post. I thank you for that little bit of info BF
As much as I like the radio buttons. With this particular company. They use a Print command at the end. They want the operator to do as little as possible. That's why they have 3 steps at the beginning. 1-Execute, 2-choose operation(takes you to a Yes/No comment) 3- Are you sure you want to run OP#XX. Then it Runs.
Believe me, the more companies I work with. I will be definitely be coming back to you, and
bfire85 , and
InspectorJester <<< little scripting freak. I'm not a scripter, I focus more on the value of the part. So I need to lean hard on you guys for this s_h_i_t
KIRBSTER269,
I need to create a form to handle that type of process. But, I am going to wait until I convert the PC-DMIS template to be used in a sub routine.
With the Template Form Editor script I use this to change the form from the lab use to a more secured form for the shop floor. This form locks the operators from the Program mode form with a password.
A password has to be entered into the Current Selection (Default is "Run Part") to open the Program Mode form.
It actually isn't that hard, but I don't want to post anything, because it was
InspectorJester who actually did it. He is going to post a YouTube step by step pretty soon for everyone. He is playing catch up right now, he was on vacation. I just don't want to take credit for his work. I put the Yes/No questions for simply if you click NO, it goes back to the Form. What OP? and if you click "Yes" it runs that OP and at the end of that OP if "Yes" go to the very "END" Label. and each op has Print Commands. << that's the way they save them.
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