Autocomplete and IntelliSense

If you’ve been developing programs for a while, you probably either love autocompletion features or you hate them.  If you’re in the former camp, or you’re just getting started with programming, this tip is just for you.  Autocomplete, or the Microsoft equivalent, IntelliSense, is a feature within certain software that tries to automatically complete what you’ve started typing before you finish typing all of the letters yourself.  For a lot of people, this is a real time-saver and can prevent typographical mistakes.  But what if you’re working on code in a text file, or in a development environment that doesn’t have autocomplete?  Here are a few utilities that can help you out.  Continue Reading

32-bit and 64-bit ASP.NET

Many developers struggle with the use of 32-bit and 64-bit address spaces.  In a nutshell, 32-bit assemblies cannot be loaded within 64-bit address spaces and 64-bit assemblies cannot be loaded within 32-bit address spaces.  Web applications are no different.  As a result, special attention needs to be paid to the requirements of web applications running on 64-bit serversContinue Reading

Aras Innovator CMII Affected Items Wizard with Bulk Change

As you may know, Aras offers standard Project Management, Quality Planning, and Configuration Management solutions for their Innovator product.  What you might not know is that there is also a whole community of other open source solutions and projects that are available to download and add to your Innovator environment.  These solutions range from integrations to CATIA, Microsoft Office and Microsoft Dynamics to examples of workflow automation.  You can find the complete list of solutions by selecting the Projects tab at the top of practically any page on the Aras website.  This article will discuss one solution in particular, the CMII Affected Items Wizard with Bulk ChangeContinue Reading

SmarTeam Scripting Character Limit

For those ENOVIA SmarTeam customers with scripts in their environment (just about everyone out there), there is a limitation on naming scripts that is worth noting.  This probably doesn’t impact customers using out-of-the-box scripts, but it is nonetheless worth checking.  It appears that somewhere in the evolution of V5R19 (it is not clear at what service pack – it may have been the GA release), Script Maintenance started to impose a 31-character limit for the names of scripts.  The problem is relatively easy to resolve (assuming that you don’t have scripts calling other scripts), but does require attention; scripts will fail to run and users will receive the error message “can’t find specified entry point.”  Continue Reading

Visual Studio Item Templates

The Visual Studio Integrated Design Environment (IDE) is highly customizable and can be extended.  In fact, it’s possible to automate repetitive and tedious item creation tasks through the use of Item Templates.  Consider the insertion of a copyright as the first line in all new class files.  Under normal circumstances, this would be a manual task with each new class file created, but Item Templates can automate the process.  The steps below outline the procedure for accomplishing just that using Visual Studio 2005.    Continue Reading

Dealing with Timezones in a Global Environment

Global collaboration can be tricky for a number of reasons.  For instance, when developing an application that is shared between users in two or more time zones, an important item to consider is the accuracy of time and date calculations.  When making decisions based on dates and times, differences in time zones can substantially affect the integrity of data.  This article describes some practices meant to limit your riskContinue Reading

SolidWorks Event Wrappers

The SolidWorks API (Application Programming Interface) is immensely powerful.  In fact, if something is doable within SolidWorks, the chances are good that there is a corresponding API.  As a result, automation possibilities are endless.  The SolidWorks API documentation is outstanding and, in most cases, provides exceptional detail.  However, one area that is somewhat tricky to navigate is event handling.  This article will cover an example for event handling when developing for SolidWorks.  Continue Reading