Oh that JSON export is cute!

I spent a little time experimenting with how to export significant amounts of data from a custom feature in a Parts Studio.  Unfortunately, it looks like Custom Tables and the Variables Table truncate data for display in the UI after a few hundred characters or so and they also return truncated results when using the "Copy to Clipboard" action.  So that's no good.

It looks like you're using a parameter in the feature editor.  I played with that too and I managed to shove about 100 KB in there (which really surprised me!) but I suspect it'll cause stability issues if I push it too far.  It's cute that it works but it doesn't seem scalable.

Unfortunately I can't embed newlines in a way that will survive copy-paste so for my purposes I'm going to try writing a custom app so I can have a more convenient download button and not risk overloading the UI.  Creating a custom app has lots of other advantages although the barrier to entry is significantly higher.

Looks like the expression driven approach overwrites the expression with a string? Which makes it so it doesn't update with changes to the variables used.

There we go. Before it seemed like it was overwriting whether or not I ever hit boolean again after setting the expression. But now it looks like it's maintaining those expressions as long as you don't switch it back and forth. Thanks!

MichaelPascoe said:

@jeff_brown304, good info. And legit! let me know how it goes.

So I’ve made a lot of progress on my CAM features and I’ve come up with two good solutions for getting substantial amounts of data out of Part Studios.

One solution was to simply use println() to dump the data to the Notices area from which the user can then copy-paste.  I have a checkbox to do this in my G-Code post processor.

And the much more convenient solution was to store the data into variables in the context and write an app to get the data out.

So I did that.  My G-Code post processor feature stores its generated files in variables along with a file index. My app’s user interface gets embedded into OnShape as a right side element panel for Part Studios and it provides links to download or view the files.  Click a link, receive a file, it’s that simple!

Here’s the code for my app.  It handles authentication with the OnShape API and presents the panel.  If you had a whole ton of JSON or CSV or other data to export from a custom feature then something like this might do the trick!

(Or instead of writing an app, yet another alternative might be to write a shell script to download the data from the OnShape API using ‘curl’.)

Source: https://github.com/j9brown/camel 

Aside: I’m planning to make a more formal announcement of my CAM features after I work out some more bugs and limitations and write some documentation. So let’s keep the conversation here focused on Michael’s cool new feature!

This featurescript works pretty well - the main issue I'm having is that when I enter in an expression into a cell sometimes the expression or variable gets erased and replaced with a static value (usually the last value of that specific variable when I edited the table). Is there any way to prevent my formulas or variables from being erased out of the table?