XMLPropWorks
While sitting at work twiddling my thumbs, I decided to write a broad based data management tool for SolidWorks. It’s patterned after an application called swCP3 written by Vinodh Kumar M and I’ve named it XMLPropWorks. I investigated swCP3 extensively, but it really didn’t suit my needs. So with permission from Vinodh, I plagiarized his idea and wrote my own XML based data management tool for SolidWorks. It’s implemented as an add-in DLL for SolidWorks and uses an XML data file to completely customize the data handling per the users requirements. It’s a modal dialog system with unique interfaces for each of the three SolidWorks files types, and can read from XML or Access files for pull-down selection, and also allows the user to write summary data to an Access database for file management.
This is a typical interface:
The application is still in beta testing, but if you would like to try it, email me.
SolidWorks Material Parsing
One of the things that XMLPropWorks does is make usage of the standard SolidWorks material database. I had found an extensive list of materials on the web here. The problem was getting this into the XMLish format of the SolidWorks material files would have been, um, tedious. So I got creative and whipped up a parsing routine in LabVIEW. It reads the standard sldmat files and can edit them, as well as read comma-delimited files and convert to the appropriate sldmat format. I tried to use some of the standard XML tools for parsing the file, but the sldmat files are rather poorly formed and it wound up being easier just search on the appropriate tokens in the file.
The interface looks like:
It works fairly well. If you want a copy, email me, and I’ll compile it and forward it to you. Be forewarned that LabVIEW executables require the LabVIEW runtime files (which I will include). It’s a non-standard executable format which is basically a tokenized file which calls the appropriate LabVIEW routines. It’s works, but it isn’t the smoothest thing in town.