• Bear's Blog: How hta Changed the Way I Deliver Builds - Part 14 - Enable Button by Username

    Bear
    Bear

    The other day we looked at how to kill the build by adding a button that will delete the appl.cfg files. The only problem with this is that once you've added it to the hta, everyone can kill it and we all know how users love to find ways of working around…

    • Tue, Oct 9 2012
  • Bear's Blog: BeyondCompare

    Bear
    Bear

    This is a great tool that allows you to compare and edit\copy\move files in directories. I use it a lot for keeping builds up to date across regions and between my development build and working build. Very handy tool and worth the small cost.

    http://www…

    • Tue, Oct 9 2012
  • Bear's Blog: Startup hta

    Bear
    Bear

    There are more ways to use hta files than just with our CAD builds. One other way I use them is to start all my programs when starting Windows. Even at home this is a handy little tool. I have created a hta that sits in the Startup section in windows…

    • Tue, Oct 9 2012
  • Bear's Blog: Config Variable Equal to

    Bear
    Bear

    Funny how some things seem to fall through the cracks. When I first did a search on this no one seemed to be able to tell me how to do it. I eventually dug it up in a cfg file from an old build. 

    What I'm talking about if the ability to use '%if' over …

    • Tue, Oct 9 2012
  • Bear's Blog: Tech Tip - Reset Styles

    Bear
    Bear

    It's a pet hate of mine. Users who think they can change fonts, colours etc to what ever they like in text and dimension styles. Well, if you're like me you have a standard set of styles that should be adhered to. If that's the case then there is another…

    • Tue, Oct 9 2012
  • Bear's Blog: Tech Tip - Config Loading

    Bear
    Bear

    A little one we'll go into detail on later, but if you want you have your cfg files load in a certain order from the one directory, then simply number them sequentially.

    ie. 10_folders
    20_main
    25_viz
    30_inclusions
    40_refdir
    50_apps
    60_user
    70_<a surprise…

    • Tue, Oct 9 2012
  • Bear's Blog: The Build - Part 5 - All Aboard the cfg Ride - Running SS2 and SS3 as Separate Builds

    Bear
    Bear

    I've ended up having to go down this path as I have a client who asked for an AECOsim build added to what they already have running. Only issue is I need to have SS2 and Structural Modeller running as well on existing projects.

    Ran this through my…

    • Tue, Oct 9 2012
  • Bear's Blog: The Build - Part 4 - All Aboard the cfg Ride - Including Other Apps

    Bear
    Bear

    Now that we have the base to build from, how do we go about including other Bentley application as well as other apps from vendors like Axiom etc.? 

    Well, it's all about order, load and line order to be more precise. What we need to think through it whether…

    • Tue, Oct 9 2012
  • Bear's Blog: The Build - Part 3 - All Aboard the cfg Ride - Site cfg's

    Bear
    Bear

    Just a little addition to the cfg article yesterday.

    One for the options we looked at in our file:

    STD_40_Inclusions.cfg

    were the lines for including out 'site' cfg files:

    %if exists ($(SITE_STDS))
    %include $(SITE_STDS)*.cfg
    %endif

    This area is set aside…

    • Tue, Oct 9 2012
  • Bear's Blog: The Build - Part 2 - All Aboard the cfg Ride

    Bear
    Bear

    As we get into the build configs, you'll start to see why the set up of the appl config is so important. Just to remind you, check out:

    http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Build-Kick-Off-USTNSITE-Part-4574598.S.153410694?qid=06b10905-4eee-4f72-bce8-221eec8b1f44&trk…

    • Tue, Oct 9 2012
  • Bear's Blog: The Build - Part 1 - Standard Directories

    Bear
    Bear

    The hta is a great start point for any build, but what about the build itself? It's very important to put some time and effort into getting this right or you will end up with a mess that is hard to configure and even harder to maintain. The build I have…

    • Tue, Oct 9 2012
  • Bear's Blog: How hta Changed the Way I Deliver Builds - Part 13 - Support Request Email

    Bear
    Bear

    Don't want to use Excel to have users create support requests. No stress, check out the tute below to create a link that opens up a blank email form:

    html - email links
    Creating an email link is simple. If you want people to mail you about your site…

    • Tue, Oct 9 2012
  • Bear's Blog: How hta Changed the Way I Deliver Builds - Part 12 - Excel Help and Change Requests

    Bear
    Bear

    I'm not a big fan of IT style Help Desk web sites where you have to log a call and wait for someone to contact you, if they do at all. I'm still a big fan of having the CAD Systems Group to be hands on and not a faceless entity. As such I've always preferred…

    • Tue, Oct 9 2012
  • Bear's Blog: How hta Changed the Way I Deliver Builds - Part 11 - Multiple Software Install Locations

    Bear
    Bear

    For the next series of posts, download the hta example from:

    http://communities.bentley.com/communities/everything_else_community/f/289/p/80102/220916.aspx#220916

    Up until new we've stay away from variable driven application and stayed with fixed paths…

    • Tue, Oct 9 2012
  • Bear's Blog: How hta Changed the Way I Deliver Builds - Part 10 - Run Your Own Scripts

    Bear
    Bear

    On the whole, I've been pretty lucky to have a good relationship with different IT groups, but on occasions I've had to work around groups who just don't want to work closer with the CAD Systems group. This means finding ways to run some of the login…

    • Tue, Oct 9 2012
  • Bear's Blog: How hta Changed the Way I Deliver Builds - Part 9 - Kill Button

    Bear
    Bear

    Ok, say I have an overriding need to kill the build to run the application in vanilla mode. Not something I would open up for all users, but this can be a handy addition to the dev hta file.

    All you need to do is add the required button with the code:

    …
    • Tue, Oct 9 2012
  • Bear's Blog: How hta Changed the Way I Deliver Builds - Part 8 - Dev Build hta

    Bear
    Bear

    As I've mentioned before, I run 2 different builds. One build is for testing and development and the other is the active main build. NOTHING is live tested, everything is testing in the dev build first before deploying. 

    As such I also run a different…

    • Tue, Oct 9 2012
  • Bear's Blog: How hta Changed the Way I Deliver Builds - Part 7 - Opening Windows Explorer

    Bear
    Bear

    The one thing I do like about the hta interface isn't so much the fact that I now have a way to deliver builds, but the fact that I can add a lot more value to these builds through the same interface. One of the easier, but more popular, additions is…

    • Mon, Oct 8 2012
  • Bear's Blog: How hta Changed the Way I Deliver Builds - Part 6 - Disable Application Button by Project

    Bear
    Bear

    Remember, everything we've gone through in these exercises can be seen in the spsi_cad.hta available for download in Part 1. 

    We've seen how to use 'if MSpath.FileExists' to check that the software has been installed in the correct location, but how…

    • Mon, Oct 8 2012
  • Bear's Blog: How hta Changed the Way I Deliver Builds - Part 5 - Check if Application is Installed

    Bear
    Bear

    OK, we've now seen how we can add variables from the hta, start MicroStation and the other verticals and also add the cfg file we need to get the build running. It's time to add a bit more functionality to our hta, the first of these being a check on…

    • Mon, Oct 8 2012
  • Bear's Blog: How hta Changed the Way I Deliver Builds - Part 4 - Starting an application

    Bear
    Bear

    We've set out client and project variables, but how do we start our different packages. I say packages because I haven't worked in an office yet where we use just MicroStation and just V8i so your build and hta must be able to cater for different Bentley…

    • Mon, Oct 8 2012
  • Bear's Blog: How hta Changed the Way I Deliver Builds - Part 3 - Setting Variables Such as Client or Project

    Bear
    Bear

    OK, so now we have the basics of our hta file, time to build what we need. The first thing I needed to get my head around was how to pass variables for 'client' and 'project' from the hta to MicroStation. Gotta love Google and after a bit of digging found…

    • Mon, Oct 8 2012
  • Bear's Blog: How hta Changed the Way I Deliver Builds - Part 2 - Defining a hta File

    Bear
    Bear

    Well, if you read the first part and the wiki link you'll see that hta files are a mix of html and vbscript. The reason I started to go down this path is that I wanted a way I could have a build delivered without the problem of people having to know vba…

    • Mon, Oct 8 2012
  • Bear's Blog: How hta Changed the Way I Deliver Builds - Introduction

    Bear
    Bear

    Been waiting on Bentley to get their Blog area fixed, and here we are.

    One thing that I struggled with for many years was how to deliver a better interface front end for accessing MicroStation and how to set variables for Client, project etc. Then, around…

    • Mon, Oct 8 2012
  • Bear's Blog: Adding an Error Alert to a Bentley cfg File

    Bear
    Bear

    One issue we have with the build we have been looking at is how do we let the user know if they haven't set the hta correctly. The biggest issue I find is that users forget to select the client or project variable. An easy way to add an error in the cfg…

    • Mon, Oct 8 2012
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