Place your PowerToys for Solid Edge v2.0 suggestions here.  I'll keep a running list of your suggestions as they're added by you.

Windows Shell Extension

1. Add support Vista columns
2. Show errors (if any) during document status change

Batch Print

1. Improve user interface
2. Support multiple profiles with ability to easily switch between profiles
3. Add ability to include\exclude specific sheets

Windows Search (New)

1. Add support for indexing Solid Edge documents

Hello Jason! Greetings from Warsaw/Poland.
For the beginning: congratulations. PowerToys = super tool. I just installed it and I am testing. I am working as the technical sales support engeneer. I demonstrated your tool for my partners / SE resellers. Because we are fighting with SolidWorks Enterprise PDM, your application will help us with it. As you probably know Enterprise PDM is integrating with the Windows Explorer.
I would like to see the space for the preview of files in the future version (thumbnails & details simultaneously).
Best regards
Tomasz

Tomasz,

Thank you for the compliment. Regarding your request, where exactly are you wanting to see the thumbnails? If you have Solid Edge installed and Windows Explorer set to thumbnail view, you can see thumbnails. Are you wanting to see it somewhere else or are you wanting the ability to show thumbnails in windows explorer on machines that do not have Solid Edge installed?

Hello Jason!

The second part of your sentence is very interesting. I intended to connect specific informations with the view of miniatures. I would like to resemble to the functionality of the system of the competition. Please look at the Full Document Preview: https://www.solidworks.com/sw/products/product-data-management-pdm-software.htm

Is there a possibility to use JT mechanisms in PowerToys for the preview?

Jason, can I write the article about your applications to Polish media?

Best regards,

Tomasz

Tomasz,

I don't have any problem with you writing an article. Actually I would appreciate it.

To answer your other questions, I have not looked into JT so I don't know much about it. The current version of my PowerToys for Solid Edge do not require Solid Edge to actually be installed because I'm able to read Solid Edge files directly and get what I need. Thumbnails have been discussed in these forums and I don't think anyone has quite figured out how to extract them without the help of the Solid Edge API. So for now, you can use the SEThumbnail.dll to get a thumbnail view of files. PowerToys can't help with that at the moment.

Thank You, Jason.
I will give you the information when I will have the ready article
Regards,
Tomasz

Hi Jason,

A number of years ago, Our VAR produced a macro for printing all the drawings in an assembly, based on opening that assembly. For some reason, this does not seem to work now, and to have it back in some shape or form would be good. It would also be nice if we could produce a report at the same time (like some of the SE reports) for extracting file name, quantity, materials and some custom attributes that we have added.

I see that power toys does not access the API, but if there was an extension, Is there a way of checking to see if a drawing is up to date before printing? It would be quite good if the drawings could be listed which are out of date, or those which also require model updates.

 

Shane

Hi Jason!

It is an article about PowerToys in one of Polish popular portals: http://www.3dcad.pl/aktualnosci/wie...d-Edge.htm

Soon I will describe about PowerToys in news letter sent to Velocity customers in Poland.

Regards,

Tomasz

Hi Jason

I would like to be able to print all drawings for an assembly including subassemblies and parts. Other products available can do this, but none of then can handle family of assemblies. If we can find the correct member and corresponding drawing it would be great. I know some users save all members in a single file, one sheet per member. Others create one file for each member. For family of parts I know there is a similar system. Some create a draft for the master part and include a family of parts table. In other situations there can be one draft file for each member.

Toralf

Tomasz,

Thanks so much for the article.  Keep spreading the word!

Shane & Toralf,

Your suggestions are the most common feature that I hear requested. When I get back around to making an update, I will for sure look into adding what you've asked.

Thanks.

Draft Script:

A draft script that will be able to insert Part (say all parts from a specified folder), automatically derive two other principal views within the same draft.

In concept, is this possible?

Cheers!

I would like the ability to batch print PDF files.

How about ading the code from FolderViewMasterIII (http://home.mchsi.com/~k.miller79/) so that folder settings can be applied to sub directories?

 

Is there anyway to get Solid Edge to show the added columns like Windows Explorer?

 

This is a follow-up to a post on the SE newsgroup about SE viewer printing problems. I see you have listed Windows search as an area for improvement in Power Toys. The problem we have (which IT can not solve) is that for some reason Windows search does not always return the correct results. You can do a search for a model or drawing and it tells you nothing is found when there is in fact a file out there. It does not matter if you use wildcards or not. Because of this problem, we exclusively use the search tool in SE and SE Viewer because it always finds the files correctly. People at our company outside of engineering will know a part number but not necessarily where it is on the server. Hence they have to go use a search tool to find it and then print it or view it.

If you could incorporate a tool within PowerToys to search for filenames, at least, it would make Power Toys usable to our people outside of engineering.

Bob Henry

 

I use SE power toys to print pdf files using PDFCreator.

 

It would be nice to add a check box:  "save file after printing" (leaving to the user the possibilty to check it or not), to get:

 

1) The desired sheet format (A4 vertical, A3 horizontal, etc) will be saved into the draft file so it will be not necessary to recall it the next time I will print the draft from inside Solid Edge.

 

2) The property "last date printed" (or something similar because I don't have the english version of SE) will be updated.

 

Best Regards, Alessandro Marchetti.

Jason:

First of all, I have great respect for the things you are doing with SE PowerToys, so thanks in advance for all of your past efforts and the benefits us users have realized.  I have a suggestion, however, for your next release. 

Seems to me that the earliest versions of Solid Edge had a limited version of this – or their 2D brethren did (Imagineer/SmartSketch) – but I’d really like to see a “Format Painter” (FP) tool that functions similar to the tool of the same name appearing throughout the MS Office suite.  If, for example, one desired to add elements to some existing geometry, you would start by selecting a line type, color, layer, style, width, perhaps even group if appropriate, etc. (in whatever order).  The idea would be to draw the new elements using whatever line currently selected, then select the “Format Painter” tool, select an object exhibiting the desired characteristics and then “paint” the new elements to impart all the desired characteristics to the new elements.

Further, I envision that the FP tool would have a selectable set of switches to enable or disable certain parameters to allow a refined feature selection – example: only change the object color and line width while leaving layer and line type as they were.  Extending this even a bit further, permitting the transfer of common parameters between dissimilar objects (i.e.: pick up the hue of a special line color and apply it to some text).

Complimenting all of this, an add-on “Status” window the shows on one “dashboard” all of a selected object’s characteristics would be welcome addition.

Just a thought…

Again, many thanks for your efforts…

HNCornell

Dear Jason,

Posted By MOmax on 31 Jan 2011 09:22 AM
Dear Jason,

Thanks a lot for the Powertoys application. I especially like the option to add (custom) collums to Windows Explorer. Some of my collegues are switching from Windows XP x86 to Windows x64. Is my conclusion right that the column function not working in Powertoys 1.3 for x64?

Best regards, Martijn Otten

The columns will work in XP x64 but not Vista or greater.  Microsoft changed their implementation.

Extra option to combine/merge all pdf files into one.

Hi

Is it possible to select the sheets to print ?
In the print setup, is it possible to have the "Print black and white" option for each printer ?

Eric BONNAUDET

Posted By Eric Bonnaudet on 01 Mar 2011 03:18 AM
Hi

Is it possible to select the sheets to print ?
In the print setup, is it possible to have the "Print black and white" option for each printer ?

Eric BONNAUDET

Not currently but those are good suggestions.  Thank you.

I have a small suggestion.