VBscript

[TeccBoxx]

I just recieved my upgrade to v9.1 and looking around I saw that it now has the option to use Visual Basic. What exactly are the uses and benifits of VB for MC. I have never taken a VB class and have only read about it. How hard is it to learn if it is benificial to to MC. Any info will be greatly appreciated.

[Bullines]

VBS in 9.1 is a wrapper for existing C-Hook funtionality. Not all of the functionality has been "wrapped" as of yet, but it will be continuously updated. The benfit of VBS is that you don't need an IDE to develop with VBS since VBS is interpreted and not compiled (like C/C++). A simple text editor will do. However, the VBS editor that ships with 9.1 is very nice and I'd recommend using that instead. Another benefit is that Visual Basic is familiar to many. VBS is a subset of Visual Basic so syntactically, they're similar, but they are two different implementations. For example...while creating a server-side ASP script (written in VBS) for Microsoft Exchange, I found out that the Format() function from VB isn't implemented in VBS. VBS, instead, has a very similar function called FormatDateTime(). Little differences like that.

 

If you've done any structured programming before (BASIC, Fortran, Pascal, Mastercam Posts, etc.), VBS shouldn't be too hard to pick up. Hope that helps.

[Mick from CNC Software Inc.]

Tazzer,

 

For a VBScript reference guide and a brief explanation of the differences between VBS, VBA and VB you can read the Microsoft VBScript help file.

 

This help file can be opened from the Mastercam VBScript editor's help menu.