Machining Automation Objects

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available in Prismatic Machining product only
available in 3 axis Surface Machining and Multi-Axis Surface Machining product only

Manufacturing activities are accessed from a ProcessDocument object as specific types of Activity objects. The IsASubtypeOf method of the Activity object allows you to determine the type of an activity.

A manufacturing activity aggregates a list of ManufacturingSetup objects representing part operations, that is, a set-up of the targeted product on a chosen machine. Each ManufacturingSetup object points on the associated ManufacturingMachine object and on the targeted Product object and aggregates a ManufacturingView which is the set of manufacturing features machined on the given set-up and a list of ManufacturingProgram objects.

A manufacturing program gathers operations performed without modifying the position of the machine's table like going to a specific point or changing the machining tool. They are represented as an aggregated list of ManufacturingOperation objects.

A ManufacturingOperation may point to the specific ManufacturingFeature it realizes and may point to the corresponding design feature. A ManufacturingFeature can be a ManufacturingHole or a ManufacturingPocket.

The ManufacturingActivity object may aggregate an associated ManufacturingTool object and are ordered using ManufacturingPrecedence objects.

The ManufacturingOutputGenerator object can be retrieved using the GetItem method called onto the ManufacturingActivity object as follows:

Dim activity As ManufacturingActivity
...
Dim outputGen As ManufacturingOutputGenerator
Set outputGen = activity.GetItem("ManufacturingOutputGenerator")

The ManufacturingGeneratorData is created and retrieved from either the ManufacturingOutputGenerator object or from its derived object ManufacturingAptGenerator using the InitFileGenerator method as follows:

Dim outputGen As ManufacturingOutputGenerator
...
Dim format, fileName As String
format = "APT"
fileName = "c:\myFile.txt"
Dim genData As ManufacturingGeneratorData
outputGen.InitFileGenerator(format, fileName, genData)

In the same way, the ManufacturingOutput object can be retrieved using the GetOutputStream method called onto the ManufacturingGeneratorData object:

Dim genData As ManufacturingGeneratorData
...
Dim outputStream As ManufacturingOutput
genData.GetOutputStream(outputStream)