I am trying to automate a force rebuild on a transition. The reason is that I am trying to update a drawing with who it was approved by and date, so this information is not always present. But when I change a state, the info is updated on the drawing card and custom properties through Set Variable. If you look at the preview after the transition, the updated info is not present however. But it shows up if you open the solidworks drawing and save it because the custom properties are there. But I need this to be automated. Is there anyway to do this during a state trasition. I have tried through creating a task and a dispatch action but have been unsucessful. I think I need to be able to check the file out, rebuild it, save it and check the file back in. So doing this through a task script seem like the most logical way to do this. But I am new to the language, so I don't know what the script should look like. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Hi,
What version of EPDM are you using?
as from eDrawings 2008 it was added support for showing updates in title block annotations linked to drawing custom properties ($PRP links, linked to Drawing File Properties) without having to open and resave the drawing in SolidWorks. This means that if a drawing custom property is linked to a variable in the drawing data card, an update to that variable (for example when a workflow transition changes state on a file and writes the revision number to the card), the updated value should be visible in eDrawings preview instantly.
However, this display update will only work if the actual custom property (for example "Revision") exist in the drawing when it is created and saved. If the title block is linked to a custom property not yet created in the drawing - and the property is created as part of the variable update (i.e. when revision is written to the card, the custom property is created at the same time) - any such annotation updates will not be seen unless the drawing is opened and resaved in SolidWorks at least once, thereby having the custom property present upon save. A workaround for this limitation in 2008 and 2009 SP3 (and lower) is to create a placeholder value in the custom property, for example a dash "-" or similar, so that it exist in the drawing and updates can be seen in eDrawings directly.
With SolidWorks 2009 SP4, the drawing format was extended to add support for eDrawings to also see updates done to custom properties not yet present upon drawing creation - thereby solving this problem as well. Note however that the drawing must have been saved or created by SolidWorks 2009 SP4 or higher and viewed with eDrawings 2009 SP4 or higher in order for this to work.
Regards,
Pedro Branco