Writing text to a file?

adamohern

Can a FeatureScript save text to a file in the project? This could be useful for analytical features that check geometry conditions, for example. It could also be useful for exporting BOM's and cut-lists.

ilya_baran

A custom feature can't modify anything other than the Part Studio it is in (see security under https://www.onshape.com/featurescript#start ).

But: FeatureScript is just one of the ways we'll have for customizing Onshape with code.  Stay tuned!

kevin_o_toole_1

In the mean time, an (admittedly terrible) solution is to print() results.

For the case of a feature which checks for geometry conditions, reportFeatureInfo() might also be what you want. It's intended for popping up short messages though — we'll truncate a message that gets too long.

ilya_baran

A custom feature can't modify anything other than the Part Studio it is in (see security under https://www.onshape.com/featurescript#start ).

But: FeatureScript is just one of the ways we'll have for customizing Onshape with code.  Stay tuned!

kevin_o_toole_1

In the mean time, an (admittedly terrible) solution is to print() results.

For the case of a feature which checks for geometry conditions, reportFeatureInfo() might also be what you want. It's intended for popping up short messages though — we'll truncate a message that gets too long.

oleg_shilovitsky

@adamohern what is the point to create BOM from Part Studio? My assumption, you'd like to make a BOM from Assembly. Did I miss something in your logic?

adamohern

oleg_shilovitsky said:

@adamohern what is the point to create BOM from Part Studio? My assumption, you'd like to make a BOM from Assembly. Did I miss something in your logic?

Short answer: FeatureScript.

Part Studios in Onshape are intended to contain multiple parts in a single design environment. Importing those parts into an Assembly is useful for motion studies, but otherwise unnecessary.

My specific use-case is for framing: I can create a single FeatureScript that generates an entire frame. With only a few features I can build an entire house frame, for example.

Each framing feature keeps tabs of how much stock it uses when creating a given frame, and saves that information to a set of variables. Each new framing feature adds to those variables, so the totals are cumulative. At the end of the feature list I can add a single feature that reads those variables and outputs a BOM without ever needing to create an Assembly, and, more importantly, it can even create a very accurate cut-list, since it knows exactly what cuts were necessary (unlike an assembly, which could only ever create a simple list of parts).

stevehess

tagging on here.....

_Ðave_

+1 for writing text to a file