Some engineering programs come with a programming language to automate the drawing production process. These are commands that are read into the program and draw entities based on a specific format.
For instance, Cadkey uses CADL and Autocad uses Autolisp. Does I-DEAS have a similar programming language or concept?
Thanks in advance,

Why worry about what Ideas has, it is a dead product.
UG has macros, GRIP and UG/Open API. For drawing borders and such, NX introduced templates.

Ideas does have a programming language, EDS is having a hard time trying to figure out how to migrate existing programs into something that UG can use without having to rewrite the original Ideas program.

"Wildfires are dangerous, hard to control, and economically catastrophic."

Ben Loosli
CAD/CAM System Analyst
Ingersoll-Rand

"Ideas, it is a dead product." - Ooh, Contentious.

Has EDS finally announced that it's no longer going to support I-DEAS. Last I heard 11.0 is out early Next Year.

That aside, if you've got loads of I-DEAS models and you wish your Details to be associative then you don't want to be doing your detailing in UG, for a start you'd have to buy UG Licenses.

As Ben says, I-DEAS does have a programming function, whereby programs can be written from scratch or sessions can be recorded, modified and played back.

I will agree that V11 will be released, but after that the migration/integrationplans of UGs and SDRC into EDS/PLM Solutions calls for them to be a single product, original code-named Unigraphics MS21.

From the merge point there were suppossed to be 3 versions of each, UG and Ideas, and then a single product. UG will have done NX1, NX2 and NX3, while Ideas will have done V9, V10 and V11.

"Wildfires are dangerous, hard to control, and economically catastrophic."

Ben Loosli
CAD/CAM System Analyst
Ingersoll-Rand

dualspiralsystems,

     To answer your question, yes, I-DEAS does have both a macro environment (which if I recall correctly is simply a C-structure along with I-DEAS specific commands), plus a more in-depth set of API's(OPEN I-DEAS/OPEN TDM, etc), which I don't know too much about but think they also (at least used to) conform to C/C++ conventions, as this is what most of I-DEAS was written in [except for the Analysis engines which tend to stay Fortran for obvious reasons] (note that these later do typically require additional licenses, etc, but are meant more for full-up ERP/PDM/CAE integrations, etc, than for typical end-user use)

     You can consult the on-line help for examples on the 'Program Files' (as the macros are typically referred to), etc, but if you have something specific you'd like to automate, you can simply go to File/Program File(s) and tell the system to start recording (your actions in the software).

     I-DEAS then records all your clicks/picks/etc in I-DEAS and outputs them to the filename that you specify (quite a handy thing for creating program templates as well).

This should get you enough to get started.

     Also, if you want to have a program file execute each time you start I-DEAS you can rename that file (I think it's something like autorun.prg but should be able to look that up) and place it in the I-DEAS start directory, which is [typically] where ever I-DEAS stores your model files or as otherwise set in the system or your user Param file.

Hope this helps...

-Ed