IPLOT in MS 3.0 has been moved to the /ideas/ms3/ulib/ip directory. Copy over any of your custom settings (ipqueue.set, *.opt files etc) from your old MS 2.1/2.0 /ideas/ms2/ip directory.
IPLOT can still be used in standalone mode from a Unix shell.
To use the IPLOT user interface from within I-DEAS issue the following command:
/fi xx opl
To use the IPLOT user interface from within standalone Drafting:
Create a link as follows. (the IPLOT interface in Drafting seems to be hard coded to look for ipqueue.set in $SDRC_INSTL/ip, if you don't do this you won't see your plotters).
su ideasadm
cd /ideas/ms3
ln -s ulib/ip ip
Then edit your /ideas/ms3/gdr/drafting.com file to set the appropriate environmental variables as follows:
:${SDRC_IP:=$SDRC_INSTL/ulib/ip}
:${SDRC_IPLOT_PLOTTING:=TRUE}
To access Drafting via I-DEAS (i.e through Drafting Setup transfers) you need to do an additional step. Edit the /ideas/ms3/bin/ideas startup script to include the following line near the end just before the call to ideas.com:
SDRC_IPLOT_PLOTTING=TRUE;export SDRC_IPLOT_PLOTTING
I think this is necessary because drafting accessed via I-DEAS does not pass through drafting.com.
HAPPY IPLOTTING!
MS3.0 Drafting does not read the plot_border setting from drafting.mm. You must explicitly set view borders not to plot each time you enter drafting. We use icon pick program files to plot from drafting (see later) and have included the following small section at the start of our progs to turn off view border plotting:
X: FP
K: OP
K: VB F
K: ^@
K: ^$
K: END
When plotting shaded images using IPLOT and HPGL2 we noticed that certain portions of the plot had black dots dithered in with the base colours. This was especially bad on light pastel colours and lead to poor quality output. The reason is that the HP DJ650C uses pen numbers from 0 to 255, where 0 = black through the spectrum to 255 = white. IPLOT by default uses pen numbers 1 to 256 in dj650c.opt. Therefore IPLOT was selecting pen 256 for white which caused the DJ650C pen map to role round back to pen 0 = black.
Solution was simply to edit dj650c.opt to include the following:
PEN RANGE = 0, 255
TONE RANGE = 0, 255
Create a custom icon panel in drafting and attach the following program file to an icon. This program will plot your currently displayed drawing and is an adaptation of one that was included in the I-DEAS VI.1 ulib directory, it still works in MS3.0 with iplot plotting configured (see above).
C: Set options to not plot view borders, workaround a MS3.0 drafting bug.
X: FP
K: OP
K: VB F
K: ^@
K: ^$
C: Get the time and create a picture file of the name "PLOTnnnnn.PFF", where
C: "nnnnn" is the number of seconds since midnight. A value
C: pf PFILENAME at 2 a.m. exactly would be "PLOTP7200.PFF"
# INQUIRE TIME("REAL",RTIME)
# ITIME = TRUNC(RTIME)
# CTIME = "P" + ITIME
# LENGTH = LEN(CTIME)
# PFILENAME = CHR(34) + "PLOT" + MID(CTIME,3,LENGTH) + ".PFF" + CHR(34)
# CMMD = "K : N " +PFILENAME
C:
X:FP PI FI
# EXECUTE COMMAND (CMMD)
K: ^@
C:
# COMNAME = "DOPLOT" + MID(CTIME,3,LENGTH)
# PNAME = "PLOT" + MID(CTIME,3,LENGTH)
# ILNG = LEN(PNAME)
# OPEN FILE(COMNAME,1,"CREATE",ISTATUS)
C:
C: The command file that will be created should look like this
C:
C: iplot (PLOTnnnnn).PFF queue plotter.opt (PLOTnnnnn).TXT
C: rm PLOTnnnnn.PFF
C: rm PLOTnnnnn.TXT
c: rm DOPLOTnnnnn
C:
C: To change the plotter and/or plotter options file (plotter.opt) just replace the
C: current plotter queue and/or plotter options file with the new ones. The length
C: of the string being written out may be different now and will have to be corrected.
C: i.e. For a HP7585a plotter with an options file, the new command would look like this:
C: # WRITE FILE (1,"iplot "+PNAME+".PFF hp_7585a hpgl.opt"\
C: +PNAME+".TXT",ILNG+ILNG+34,0)
C:
# EXECUTE PROCESS ("chmod +x "+COMNAME,0)
C:
# WRITE FILE (1,"iplot "+PNAME+".PFF hp_7585a hpgl.opt "+PNAME+".TXT",ILNG+ILNG+45,0)
C:
C: these are the lines that clean up the files just created
C:
# WRITE FILE (1,"rm "+PNAME+".PFF",ILNG+7,0)
# WRITE FILE (1,"rm "+PNAME+".TXT",ILNG+7,0)
# WRITE FILE (1,"rm "+COMNAME,ILNG+3+2,0)
# CLOSE FILE (1)
C:
C: Execute the command procedure that was just written and
C: immediately return control to Drafting with an accompanying message
C:
# EXECUTE PROCESS(COMNAME,1)
# SHOW MESSAGE("PLOT WRITTEN AND SPOOLING. HIT TO CONTINUE")
E: END
Note: MS6 allows the plotting of high-res pictures files straight from the "file/picture file" menu. The following is only necessary in MS5 and below.
First run in normal mode and set up your display as desired. Save and exit then re-start I-DEAS in batch mode, I use the command:
ideas -d x3d -e "/f pr r fil picture.prg okay" -q -b
where: -d = device driver to use (x3d in this case)
-e = execute program file
-q = skip confirmation of defaults
-b = batch mode
picture.prg is a program file that will produce a picture file, I use:
K : $ return
K : $ mpos :; /F PI
K : OP
K : F F
K : OKAY
K : FIL big.pff
K : OKAY
K : Y
K : $ return
K : $ mpos :; /DO SO
K : OKAY
K : $ return
K : $ mpos :; /F E N
E : **** END OF SESSION ****
The default size of the picture file produced is 2000 x 2000. You can alter this by editing the /ideas/ms3/ideas/ideas.tcf file. Change the line in the X driver section *DEVICE to *DEVICE RES = x-res y-res
If you experience segmentation errors while running in batch mode increase you TVM allocation and memory preference settings.