PC-Dmis Automation C#

I received some messages with several questions on Visual Studio regarding setting up C# for writing programs for PC-Dmis, so I created this long comment that hopefully may answer some of those questions. This is in two parts, this part is mostly about setting up a bare bones application that connects with PC-Dmis. The second part has the actual code for this bare bones project. This bare bones project does not use any code from the google drive in my first comment above. It just has the bare minimum code for connecting to PC-Dmis in a separate thread.

Good Luck

Here are the steps for creating a barebones C# application that connects to PC-Dmis. This is not really what I consider a best practice form of writing C# code, but it does present a simplified code view of the process. In this demo I'm using the Community 2019 Edition of Visual Studio (it's free). Other version are okay, the interface on startup may differ but all the same tasks for creating a new project are the same, just located on different menus.

I start Visual Studio and select 'Create a new project'.



Select 'Windows Forms App (.NET Framework)'



If you're new to C# use the same Project name and Solution name (uncheck the 'Place solution and project in the same directory' box if checked) that I use in the screen shot below. Under 'Framework', it doesn't generally matter which framework version you choose as long as use use the same version for all your PC-Dmis C# programming apps and libraries. The later versions may have C# code features not available in earlier versions. I've been using 4.5 successfully for the past couple of years.



We now add the reference to the PC-Dmis COM file. On the right side of the VS window is the 'Solution Explorer'.. Right-click on 'References' and select 'Add References'.

In the 'Reference Manager' pop-up menu (see next image below), on the left side select 'COM'. Then in the center pane, scroll down to a 'PC-DMIS ####.# Object Library' entry. Select that line ( if you have more than one version of PC-Dmis installed, pick one, it doesn't matter which). After selecting the line, be sure to also click on the check box to the left of that line. Now click the 'OK' button on bottom right.



The 'Solution Explorer' should look like the following image. Note the addition of 'PCDLRN' to the list under 'References'.



Next we create the User interface.

I received some messages with several questions on Visual Studio regarding setting up C# for writing programs for PC-Dmis, so I created this long comment that hopefully may answer some of those questions. This is in two parts, this part is mostly about setting up a bare bones application that connects with PC-Dmis. The second part has the actual code for this bare bones project. This bare bones project does not use any code from the google drive in my first comment above. It just has the bare minimum code for connecting to PC-Dmis in a separate thread.

Good Luck

Here are the steps for creating a barebones C# application that connects to PC-Dmis. This is not really what I consider a best practice form of writing C# code, but it does present a simplified code view of the process. In this demo I'm using the Community 2019 Edition of Visual Studio (it's free). Other version are okay, the interface on startup may differ but all the same tasks for creating a new project are the same, just located on different menus.

I start Visual Studio and select 'Create a new project'.



Select 'Windows Forms App (.NET Framework)'



If you're new to C# use the same Project name and Solution name (uncheck the 'Place solution and project in the same directory' box if checked) that I use in the screen shot below. Under 'Framework', it doesn't generally matter which framework version you choose as long as use use the same version for all your PC-Dmis C# programming apps and libraries. The later versions may have C# code features not available in earlier versions. I've been using 4.5 successfully for the past couple of years.



We now add the reference to the PC-Dmis COM file. On the right side of the VS window is the 'Solution Explorer'.. Right-click on 'References' and select 'Add References'.

In the 'Reference Manager' pop-up menu (see next image below), on the left side select 'COM'. Then in the center pane, scroll down to a 'PC-DMIS ####.# Object Library' entry. Select that line ( if you have more than one version of PC-Dmis installed, pick one, it doesn't matter which). After selecting the line, be sure to also click on the check box to the left of that line. Now click the 'OK' button on bottom right.



The 'Solution Explorer' should look like the following image. Note the addition of 'PCDLRN' to the list under 'References'.



Next we create the User interface.