Use Report, viz(), and dbg() for conditional println and debug visualizations

jnewth

Earlier this year I wrote a utility called "Report". The one-sentence description is "Conditional debug visualization and println controlled by feature and not by code".

Here's an intro video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eu7puEa8Oak

You can find the feature and functions here: https://cad.onshape.com/documents/e2576bfe13aaaabd67b0fe1d/v/4322f20d8f97ab12eeab937c/e/e954caf65d5d66b94f8bb90a

Here's how it works:

1. Import the feature Report in to your toolbar.

2. Import the functions dbg() and viz() in to your custom features.

3. When writing code, use dbg() instead of println and use viz() instead of adding debug entities through debug or addDebugEntities functions.

4. When your custom feature call viz() and dbg() functions instead of println() and debug(), the Report feature will enable the console printing and debug visualization for only the viz() and dbg() calls you want to activate, all controlled by keyword.

5. Suppress and unsuppress Report features to enable/disable visualization in your custom feature while your custom feature is being edited:

Note: This is very similar to another reporting tool I wrote a while back. I've renamed that tool "Log" as it's much more focused on mimicking logging tools like log4j but otherwise its behavior is unchanged. If that is a better match for your needs you can read about it here: https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/23476/featurescript-writers-stop-using-println-and-start-using-report-new-featurescript-announcement

Let me know what you think!

GregBrown

@jnewth thanks so much for creating and sharing this. It is proving invaluable in a current project I'm working on (as you know!) which otherwise was full of numerous messy debug and println's…

Derek_Van_Allen_BD

My surface tweening feature is over 2000 lines of code but most of it is diagnostics as I build the core logic.
I wonder how much of that I could scrape out of there using this.

ry_gb

I literally just stumbled upon the other video this morning! Great work!