November 2010 ~ Inventor Tales

Monday, November 29, 2010

Keep Your Finger on the Trigger - iLogic and Event Triggers

“Next in importance to having a good aim is to recognize when to pull the trigger.”
David Letterman

Just a short post for today. I spent the holiday snowboarding in Mammoth, so I only had limited internet access for a few days. But for views like this, I'll give up a bit of web access.

And the time off was great!

The view from town is pretty nice.

Who wouldn't want to have a morning like this.

For today, I wanted to expand upon last week's post and talk about Event Triggers in iLogic. In that post, I talked about creating a rule to choose my sheet size, border, and title block by choosing them from a dialog box created in iLogic.

This rule could be fired by clicking the iTrigger icon on the 'Manage' Tab in the drawing.

The dialog box created in iLogic

But what if you want a rule to fire automatically, under a specific condition?

That's where an Event Trigger can come into play.

By clicking on the Event Trigger icon, you can specify the condition under which a rule fires without you explicitly asking it to.

1) Click Event Trigger from the 'Manage Tab'.


Access the Event Trigger

2) Right click to edit an event.

Right click to add or remove the rules attached to an event

3) Choose the rule (or rules to attach to the desired event)

Edit your rule

One you do that, you can now fire the rule when you want it to. For example, when I start this file from a template, the option to choose my sheet size, border, and template fires up automatically!

Sunday, November 21, 2010

Drawing Conclusions on Formatting a Drawing with iLogic

“Information is a source of learning. But unless it is organized, processed, and available to the right people in a format for decision making, it is a burden, not a benefit.”
William Pollard

***Edit 4-April-2012***

I've added the file I used in this blog post to the GrabCAD website if you want to download it and take a look. You do have to be a member, but I think you'll find that it's a great site with a lot of free CAD models.

***

As I was wrapping up my videos for the Autodesk Manufacturing Academy, I found a video that had slipped through the cracks. I had recorded it, but I hadn't produced it. So I finished it up and added it for this weeks post.

This video discusses how to change drawing formats with iLogic.

The finished rule asking you for the format you want to use

One more note before you look at the code below! If you use event triggers, you can fire the rule automatically. For example, the image below sets the drawing to fire it's rule when I start a new drawing. If you set this from a template, the drawing will ask you which drawing format you want when you start it!

Use event triggers to fire a rule when a particular event happens. This one occurs when you start a new file

So without further delay, here's the video!

Here is the full code for this particular rule. Once you get the first couple of rows down, it's a matter of copying, pasting, and changing options to get the others.

'Fires Rules when iTrigger icon is clicked

trigger = iTrigger0

'Creates a dialog box asking us which format we want

Format_Select= InputListBox("Select Format Type", MultiValue.List("Border_Type"), Border_Type, Title := "Drawing Format Selection", ListName := "List")

'Sets sheet size, title block, and border for A size

If Format_Select = "A Border" Then

ActiveSheet.ChangeSize("A", MoveBorderItems := True)

ActiveSheet.TitleBlock = "Small Border Title Block"

ActiveSheet.Border = "A-Border"

'Sets sheet size, title block, and border for B size Sheet 1

ElseIf Format_Select = "B Border Page 1" Then

ActiveSheet.ChangeSize("B", MoveBorderItems := True)

ActiveSheet.TitleBlock = "Large Format Page 1"