NX9 Macros error out in Drafting Preferences

[Kenja824]

In detailing work, I create a lot of macros to perform tasks I repeatedly do. One macro I have made a lot in the past is a set-up macro, where it goes into the preferences and sets it up so that everyone uses the same setting. All of the lettering to be set at a spacific size and color, dimensions to use specific settings, etc...

With the change into NX9 however, the Drafting Settings are in a different format and Macros error out when they are expected to make changes to settings.

I tried to record a journal (which I know very little about) but it errored out on playback as well.

Any suggestions?

 

[JohnRBaker]

Why aren't you using a Drawing templates with all of that stuff preset in the template file?

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Digital Factory
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[Kenja824]

To be honest, I am not positive what you mean by Drawing Templates. I asked a few others around and they are not sure either. lol My best guess would be when we click File - New and the pop-up window show some tabs at the top and each tab has a list of different types we can create. If this is it, our hands are sort of tied as we do work for a company and they insist on us using one particular file to create new files with.

Most of the attributes are already set on the new files, but there are things we do not like and set for ourselves. Also, for each file we create, we might have several different people work on it at one time or another and sometimes settings get changed. Plus, there are times when we use an outside source to help get large jobs done in time. Often we will get these files back with some weird settings and when we make changes/corrections we need to set everything up right. And I cannot tell you how often we have found someone changed a tex size or font for some unknown reason while all they are supposed to do is create the model or something. lol Or some newer guy will change the arrowheads because he likes them filled in and not just closed. So it helps to have an icon that will select all notes and dimensions and fix the settings.

I cannot put all the reasons down, but there are many why we need to change preferences quite often. But Drafting Preferences uses a different type of pop=up window now and I cant get Macros to follow what is selected in that one.

 

[Imadunatic]

Kenja,

Did you ever find a solution to this? While John's suggestion is one solution, we prefer to have our drawings saved as sheets in our top level assembly file and not create new components for every burn location. My particular scenario involves two sets of drafting preferences (one for die designs, one for EDM burn locations) and it seems like it would be really simple for UG to allow users to save multiple sets of drafting preferences accessible through the "inherit" section at the bottom of the preferences window. This would also solve your issue.

 

[Kenja824]

Imadunatic;

Cowski was kind enough to work patiently with me and help me learn a lot about recording Journals. It turns out that Journals (unlike Macros) can work with the new Drafting Preferences. If you are interested in recording Journals, I would take a look at these threads....

[URL unfurl="true"]http://www.eng-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=374824[/url]

[URL unfurl="true"]http://www.eng-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=375132[/url]

He really does a good job of explaining how to clean up a Journal code so it is easy to read and from there it is easier to combine them when you need to. I'm now wishing I would have worked with Journals all along. lol