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Property Tab Builder
6

Property Tab Builder

Property Tab Builder

(OP)
Buried in the SolidWorks Tools folder for SW '09 is a program called "Property Tab Builder."  I played around with it a little today, and it seems like a pretty cool UI for your custom properties.  Just wondering if anyone else is actually using it, and why SW hasn't advertised it's release as much as everything else.  Any comments?

Dan

www.eltronresearch.com
Dan's Blog

RE: Property Tab Builder

3
1. Property Tab Builder is well known to everybody who had the curiosity to look into what was new in SW2009.
2. I am using it right now but it can not have the same fuctionality as a VB program or macro. You can build some logic into it using the radio buttons and/or the checkbox controls. Use the "Date" type very carefully as it will not read an already existing date and it will change it. I ended up using simple textboxes instead of dates until SW comes up with an improvement to the way in handles the property tab bulder controls. Another shortcoming is with a property having the same name in global and configuration specific properties. In my case I have a property called "Material" set as a global custom property for made parts and as a configuration specific for purchase parts. I am using radio buttons to select which set of properties I am shown but once I define the material property as global it will not allow me to define material as a configuration specific. The work around is to open the created file with a text editor (like Notepad) and type in "Material" instead of the weird name you find there. Generally I think it is a good idea to open the property files with Notepad and verify what's in them.
3. For me the best thing of this new property tab is in assemblies as you click on a part it will show the properties of the part and it will allow you to see or change them right there.
4. If anybody is interested I can post my property tab files and my data excel file.  

RE: Property Tab Builder

I love the new function. I took awhile to understand the basics, but it is way cool now that I understand most of it. I really don't know how to use the radio buttons and what they exactly do. Dogarila metioned an example, but still don't get it. I like how you can path to Tab Delimited files for the list boxes (pulldown). I'm planning on setting that up for signatures in our title block formats. This will help DC when filling out docs for release. Our Assembly and Part templates have the exact CP's, so I created one for Part, copied it, and renamed the filepath to the Assembly and it worked. It save me from creating it twice.

Best.

Colin Fitzpatrick (aka Macduff)
Mechanical Designer
Solidworks 2008 SP 4.0
Dell 490 XP Pro SP 2
Xeon CPU 3.00 GHz 3.00 GB of RAM
nVida Quadro FX 3450 512 MB
3D Connexion-SpaceExplorer

RE: Property Tab Builder

LOL! I like Barney, Betty, Fred and Wilma. Also Pixie and Dixie! Too funny dogarilla.

A star for for uploading files and referencing Hanna Barbera cartoons.

Best,

Colin Fitzpatrick (aka Macduff)
Mechanical Designer
Solidworks 2008 SP 4.0
Dell 490 XP Pro SP 2
Xeon CPU 3.00 GHz 3.00 GB of RAM
nVida Quadro FX 3450 512 MB
3D Connexion-SpaceExplorer

RE: Property Tab Builder

Thanks dogarila,

You have done a good job.

I am sure,anybody can now build their own property tab with this example.
This is really a nice utility.

A star for you.

RE: Property Tab Builder

Since we're giving out stars, what about our friend CBL? He sent a killer link to Ricky Jordan's website. Ricky did a fantantic job with his demo.

Thanks CBL, you rock!

 

Colin Fitzpatrick (aka Macduff)
Mechanical Designer
Solidworks 2008 SP 4.0
Dell 490 XP Pro SP 2
Xeon CPU 3.00 GHz 3.00 GB of RAM
nVida Quadro FX 3450 512 MB
3D Connexion-SpaceExplorer

RE: Property Tab Builder

Matt, it's awesome! Dogarila's attachments helped me understand more of the functionallity. The radio buttons are great, now that I know how to use them!

Regards,

Colin Fitzpatrick (aka Macduff)
Mechanical Designer
Solidworks 2008 SP 4.0
Dell 490 XP Pro SP 2
Xeon CPU 3.00 GHz 3.00 GB of RAM
nVida Quadro FX 3450 512 MB
3D Connexion-SpaceExplorer

RE: Property Tab Builder

We use separate .TXT files for our drop-down lists.  The excel file peaked my interest so I tried Dogarila's properties out but couldn't get it to work.  The drop-down lists were empty and when I tried to edit it with the SW Propeties Tab Builder I get error boxes that say "Invalid filename for list" a few times then it crashes and I get the error "Property Tab Builder has encountered a problem and needs to close.  We are sorry for the inconvenience.  Send error report - Don't send"

I put the files in the correct file path, and removed our properties tab files so they wouldn't interfere and re-started SW.  Anybody else have this problem?   

Flores

RE: Property Tab Builder

Yeah, I received that error as well, but it wasn't with the excel file. I think it was due to making a lot of changes all at onetime experimenting with the radio buttons and what not.

I didn't try the excel version, the .txt files will work just fine with me. I know the excel file can hold all your info, but had bad experiences in the past  with excel and SW playing together.
 

Colin Fitzpatrick (aka Macduff)
Mechanical Designer
Solidworks 2008 SP 4.0
Dell 490 XP Pro SP 2
Xeon CPU 3.00 GHz 3.00 GB of RAM
nVida Quadro FX 3450 512 MB
3D Connexion-SpaceExplorer

RE: Property Tab Builder

Thanks for the sites CorBlimeyLimey
A star for you.

Bradley
SolidWorks Pro 2009 x64, SP2.0
PDMWorks Workgroup, SolidWorks BOM,
HP xw8600,
64-bit Windows Vista Business
Service Pack 1
Intel Xeon CPU, 3.00 GHz, 16 GB RAM, Virtual memory 166682 MB,
nVidia Quadro FX 4600 Driver 7.15.11.6956

RE: Property Tab Builder

smcadman,

You need to edit all three .prp files with notepad (or any other editing program) and modify the file location to point to "your location." and save.

Hope this will work.

Thanks

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