Batch mode SolidWorks

I saw a post on Google Groups where a user had posted a question (2 years ago) asking how one could open SolidWorks silently viz. no GUI and use SolidWorks APIs to open a part but there was no answer that I could find right of.

In the same vein as my previous post titled "Batch mode Pro/Engineer" I tried to create a similar workspace for SolidWorks that executes SolidWorks with no GUI but still uses the SolidWorks API to load and query parts or assemblies. Fortunately SolidWorks API makes it much easier to do this as compared to Pro/Toolkit. After a little experimentation I came up with the following solution. The solution was created in Visual Studio 2005 using Visual C++. Click on the following zip file to download the solution.



http://ossandcad.googlecode.com/files/swbatch.zip





If you prefer to download from the source, you can do so using the following link with your SVN client (e.g. TortoiseSVN (follow the instructions at http://code.google.com/p/ossandcad/source/checkout)):

https://ossandcad.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/swbatch




Setup of Solution
Simply create a new "Win32 Console Application" project in Visual Studio 2005.


Edit the project's properties and add the following directory to the "Additional Include Directories" under "Configuration Properties"->C/C++->General:

"c:\program files\solidworks\samples\appcomm\win32\"

You should have a "cpp" file named swbatch.cpp (or something similar depending on the name you selected for the console application). Open that file and add the following code to it above the main() (or _tmain()) function.

#include "iostream"
#include "objbase.h"
#include "atlbase.h"

//Import the SolidWorks type library
#import "C:\Program Files\SolidWorks\sldworks.tlb" raw_interfaces_only, raw_native_types, no_namespace, named_guids
//Import the SolidWorks constant type library
#import "C:\Program Files\SolidWorks\swconst.tlb" raw_interfaces_only, raw_native_types, no_namespace, named_guids

Then modify your main() (or _tmain()) function to look like the source code included in the zip file. I apologize for not posting the code directly into the body of this post, but Blogger was messing up the formatting.

Make the following changes to the code in main():

• Make sure you have a SLDPRT file in the location stated above instead of "C:\\swbatch\\Debug\\camtest.sldprt". Change the path to which sFileName points to, to coincide with your true path.
  

Build the solution and execute it. The console application will startup and silently load SolidWorks. If you have Windows Task Manager open then you will see SLDWORKS.exe running. If the SLDPRT is found in the right location, then the code above reads the SLDPRT and throws a MessageBox with the name of the first feature of the SLDPRT, which in this case is "Annotations". After the program exits, SolidWorks exits too.

Note:
Please keep in mind the following points about the code in main() in the zip file:

• I first tried to use OpenDoc6 as follows:

• 
  
  

  swApp->OpenDoc6(L"C:\\cygwin\\home\\ganesh\\downloads\\imagecom\\batch\\camtest.sldprt", swDocPART, swOpenDocOptions_Silent, L"Default", &fileerror, &filewarning, &swModel)

• By doing that, SolidWorks started up with its GUI and then tried to load the model, which was not what we wanted. Next I tried an old API OpenDocSilent() as follows:
• 
  
  

  swApp->IOpenDocSilent(sFileName, swDocPART, &fileerror, &swModel)

• This had the required effect of opening SolidWorks silently and loading the model in it.
• The other big problem I noticed was: IF YOU LOAD A READ-ONLY SLDPRT INTO SOLIDWORKS USING OPENDOCSILENT(), FOR SOME REASON SOLIDWORKS STARTS UP WITH GUI. The only solution I have for this at the present is to not load read-only parts or assemblies.

If you found this article useful, please let me know. It helps me identify which posts, my readers prefer.

UPDATE: THE POST WAS UPDATED ON AUGUST 3RD 2009 TO REPLACE THE DOWNLOAD LINK FOR SWBATCH.ZIP. PREVIOUSLY SWBATCH.ZIP WAS SERVED FROM BOX.NET. IT IS NOT BEING SERVED FROM GOOGLECODE.

Batch mode Pro/Engineer

Have any of you tried to start Pro/Engineer in batch mode? I found the following suggestion in Pro/Toolkit documentation tkuse.pdf:

"To ensure that the Pro/ENGINEER main Graphics Window and Message Window are not displayed, you should use either the command-line option -g:no_graphics (or the configuration file option “graphics NO_GRAPHICS”) to turn off the Pro/ENGINEER graphics."

So to start Pro/Engineer in batch mode with no graphics try the following with Pro/Engineer Wildfire 3.0. To execute this simply open a command prompt using Windows Start->Run-> Enter "cmd", press OK, enter the following into the command prompt and enter enter.

"C:\Program Files\proeWildfire 3.0\bin\proe.exe" -g:no_graphics

To verify if Pro/Engineer started with no GUI simply open Task Manager and look for xtop.exe, which is Pro/Engineer's executable. But since no processing is happening, xtop.exe will quit after a few seconds.

Why is this important?
Well if you wanted to perform the same operations on numerous files (part or assembly), then theoretically you could execute Pro/Engineer without GUI from the directory where you have a Pro/Toolkit application installed with a protk.dat registry file and Pro/Engineer will load that Pro/Toolkit application. The application can then perform its functions without needing user interaction. For an example see this link where they use this method but instead of a Pro/Toolkit application they use the "trail" files to script the batch processing. Something similar can be duplicated with a Pro/Toolkit application.

Why do I mention this?
As a developer of Pro/Toolkit applications it is very important for me to able to test my program thoroughly with as much automation as possible. By using the batch mode without GUI provided with Pro/Engineer I can create a workspace that tests my application using numerous combinations of input and output without user interaction.

I plan to write on topics related to integrated test frameworks for Pro/Toolkit applications and batch mode could become an important part of that. Keep following my blog for similar posts.