In the case of a folder based macro library, you also get good flexibility to add, modify or delete macros within that folder without impacting users. Once the macro libraries are defined, they can quickly be accessed by pressing ALT-F8. Overall, this is actually a fairly decent option. Macro libraries can be easily defined from the Tools-Macro dialog panel and this information finally gets saved into the CATSettings.
This may work for just a few buttons or if the macros are very mature and don’t require any maintenance over time but in general it’s not a good option.Ī macro library is typically a folder containing some CATScript and/or catvbs files or it is a specific catvba project. When you consider this, what if you need to make a change to one of the macros referenced on a toolbar? Or remove one? Or add a new one? You can make those changes to your company default CATSettings but then to roll them out, you must force everyone to throw away some of their own local setting customizations and take the new default ones. From that point on, all changes you make are saved in your unique CATSetting files. The first time you start up CATIA, it usually grabs default settings that your company has defined and copies them to a folder specific to your login. However, one problem is that the same CATSetting file that manages your toolbars also manages many other settings. There are many CATSettings files and they are somewhat divided up by basic categories. First, realize that CATSettings aren’t just things you find in the Tools-Options panel – almost everything you do that affects the appearance of CATIA gets saved back to CATSettings. In case you aren’t familiar with how CATSettings work I’ll briefly explain. There are actually several reasons for this, but the primary reason is due to the fact that the definition for that custom toolbar and all of its buttons is actually saved in CATSettings files.
Distributing and maintaining that toolbar for many users can be a nightmare.
I’m not going to discuss how to do this because it is covered well enough in the CATIA help docs (see notes at end of article).Ĭreating a custom toolbar gives a very professional appearance but unfortunately in most cases, it only works well on your PC. Each button can launch a CATIA command or in this case a macro or VBA project. You can also define a custom icon for each button and even the tooltip text that should appear when a user hovers their mouse over the icon. It is possible to easily create your own custom toolbars in CATIA and add commands to them. In this article, I will first discuss some issues associated with using some of those other methods then I’ll discuss the catalog option.
After experimenting over the years with different methods, I have found that using a catalog works very well. It is possible to create custom toolbars, use macro libraries or even execute them from a file folder. There are numerous ways to deploy your various CATIA macros and VBA projects to a larger group of users.