(Announcement) New download made available today

Today, I posted an example showing how to efficiently handle interactive selection of objects on a form with a clean layout.   For more information, please visit the downloads page.

Checking CATIA licenses at runtime

The CATIA automation API provides an extensive set of functionality across many different workbenches. Depending on what functionality your program will provide, you may need to consider what licenses are required. In this article, I will show how to add code to your program to check whether certain licenses have been granted.

Deploying your macros and programs

There are numerous ways to deploy your various CATIA macros and VBA projects to a larger group of users.  It is possible to create custom toolbars, use macro libraries or even execute them from a file folder.  After experimenting over the years with different methods, I have found that using a catalog works very well.  In this article, I will first discuss some issues associated with using some of those other methods then I’ll discuss the catalog option.

Efficiently navigating parameter collections

Many times over the years, I have seen a common problem posted in CATIA forums.  The problem is that some macro runs great on smaller parts or products, but it slows down tremendously on larger ones.  The programmer has noticed that the slowness happens when trying to retrieve a parameter from a parameters collection.  Fortunately, the problem is very easy to correct.  In this article I will show how to work with smaller parameter collections to boost performance and also show how to more reliably get at the specific parameters you need.