Custom Property Reader/Comparer

I am looking for a macro or utility that will take every document that
I have open (sometimes many) and give me a list of all custom
properties in each one of them, so that I can easily compare them to
one another. I envision it taking each document and putting the
custom properties in individual Excel-like columns, side by side.
Though it doesn't have to work exactly like this...

Currently, I have to ctrl-tab to each one of them to view them, and
try to remember them from one document to another (or write them
down). Surely there is a better way.

Does anyone have anything like this, or have any other ideas on how to
make this operation easier and quicker? Remember, I mainly need this
for viewing only, not to make them all the same as each other.
However the ability to modify them from this utility would also be
great, but not necessary....

Seth Renigar

 

You can shift select the customer properties in SW, ctrl-c, and then
paste into excel. That capability might be the first step up the food
chain.

Diego

 

I have done that. But the problem there is that some documents might
have different properties than others, or in a different order. It
becomes quite a hassle.

But thanks for the suggestion though....

I just found "Property Lister for Assemblies" on www.kentcontract.com,
which is kind-of close to what I am after. But there are problems and
nuances with it.

1. It will only do parts from a single assembly document. I would
like to see a macro that will do only all open documents, whether that
be parts, assemblies, or drawings (or any combination). Not the parts
that they reference.
2. It does not bring in all of the properties. When I just tried it
on a assembly, on a multi-config part it brought in only config.
custom properties. There were some regular custom properties that
were not on the config. properties that it ignored.
3. It brings in only the text expression, not the evaluated value. I
have property values that link to the mass. It only brings in the
linking text.

Any other suggestions????

Seth

 

I wrote one of these utilities that works as a VBA project in Excel.
It will list custom properties for all SW files within a given
directory. The limitations are: It doesn't retreive configuration
specific properties. In its present form it doesn't look at drawings
(but I could change that if you want)

You can get a copy here:
http://www.christopherrush.com/downloads.html
or send me an email if you want me to modify the code.

For a really useful application for managing custom properties check
out Custom Property Propagator here:
www.customSolids.com
CR

 

Thanks Christopher.

This sounds like a better solution than the other one that I
mentioned. But, I downloaded it and tried to use it and it wouldn't
work. I followed the directions exactly, but got the following error:

Run-time error '429:
ActiveX component can't create object

I tried it several times doing something slightly different each time
to try to get it to work. But, I had no luck. Do you have any ideas
what may be going on here?

Seth Renigar

 

Hi Seth,

Our "Gold Partner" product ToolWorks BOM Manager will enable you to overview
all custom properties in an MS-Excel look-alike interface. All properties
can be modified and changed from this interface also. Maybe this will help
you.

You can download the 30 days trial and give it a try...

http://www.toolworks.info

BR
Jess

 

Tried it here with no problems. Make sure you do not have a file in the
directory open or you will get an error.

Steve R

 

Sounds like all of the parts still need to be in an assembly for this
to work... I could create a bogus assembly I guess. But this could
be a hassle as oftain as I need to do this sort of thing.

Seth