The most common activity of a macro is to send simulated keystrokes and mouse clicks to one or more windows. Once tested, the new drawer template should be available soon (feel like doing a little beta testing?).Creating a Keyboard Macro or Mouse Macro Creating a Keyboard Macro or Mouse MacroĪ macro is a series of scripted actions that is "played" upon demand. Thanks to Alex Franke and the coding template posted on his site, I am adding a few more functions that will be available for use in scripts. Something I hope will be even more efficient if I can code it in Visual Basic and the API (using the free Visual Basic 2005 Express). I really appreciated scripts/macros tonight as I had to lock and unlock 70 part file configurations while working on my latest drawer template. I expect to continue to use both tools where appropriate, but will be trying to write and publish more AutoHotKey scripts to share with other users. It is weak in the user Dialog area, but an extensive range of functions. At $35, I feel it is a great value and provides nice menu capabilities and other features. A very good introduction to keystroke programming. Macro Express is nice from the standpoint of being more a keystroke recording tool, with menu driven command selection. It is a lot easier to struggle through an operation in Alibre using the keyboard, and then go back and either redo the capture or clean up the recorded script. I ended up choosing AutoHotKey for the macro capture tool as it is a real pain to have to write scripts from scratch. I tried to use as many "wait for window" operations as possible to eliminate timing problems (something that always seems to plague scripts/macros).ĪutoIt and AutoHotKey looked similar, both using a Visual Basic style of scripting, and both have GUI tools. I just upgraded to a faster computer, so the sleep times may have to be increased, based on users system performance. I am sure my scripts will become more sophisticated with time, but I ended up adding some sleep times to allow operations to complete. I am impressed with the operation of AutoHotKey, and the macro recorder is invaluable in roughing out the base script (by running through desired operation with keystrokes in Alibre).īeware of my script though, as it is my first with AutoHotKey. Miles, can you offer any recommendations for choices between the many scripting tools? The time spent in training/learning software can be an enormous operating cost, and I try to carefully select those pieces of software that are best worth this tremendous investment of time. While the Alibre API and Visual Basic give me a headache, the fog is starting to clear and I am now creating additional tools to expand my scripting capabilities (configuration count down, and all configurations lock/unlock to go). Windows VBScript is just a real pain to use, and it has made me appreciate these scripting tools. AutoHotKey fits quite well with the VB based workflow, and fills in where Macro Express is weak in the GUI Dialog box area. I don't want to get spread myself too thin while I am trying to study VBScript, Visual Basic and the Alibre API. I took a look at AutoIt as well (and a few others), but chose to expand my understanding only to AutoHotKey at this time because of the macro recorder capability and smart GUI creation tool.
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