Old Tooltable vs New Tooltable

[THMProgram]

Okay, so We updated our tooltable information from the oldstyle using the pwrtt$ postblock to the new ptooltable$ postblock and everything works great except for one thing.  When done the old way, if a tool was repeated in the tooltable it was ignored automatically when run through the pwrrt$ postblock.  We didn't have to do anything for it.  Now, with the new ptooltable$ postblock, it doesn't ignor the duplicate tool.

Example: 

Operation 1 uses tool 123

Operation 2 uses tool 124

Operation 3 uses tool 123 again

Old tool table would give me:

(Tool 123 - Description)

(Tool 124 - Description)

The new tool table gives me:

(Tool 123 - Description)

(Tool 124 - Description)

(Tool 123 - Description)

Is there a way to make it automatically ignore the duplicates again that I'm not finding in the MP_documentation?  Thanks for taking your time to look at this.

 

 

EDIT:

The Correct answer on how to do this is below.

"Hi,

You should be able to do this by evaluating tt_count$.  If tt_count$ is anything other than 1, then the tool hasn't been output yet (tt_count$ = 0), or has already been output (tt_count$ > 1).

Below is a very simple snippet showing this in use. 

ptooltable$

if tt_count$ = 1,

[

sopen_prn, *tt_tool$, sdelimiter, *tt_tlngno$, sclose_prn, e$

]"

 

 

 

[Colin Gilchrist]

I don't believe there is an "automatic" way to do this. I'm guessing that you'd need to submit an enhancement request.

With the old "pwrtt$" NCI Pre-Read Method, MP had a mechanism built into it, that would change the Sign of the Tool Number. So the "first" time a Tool was read in the NCI (say T123) for example, the value of 't$' would be "123.". After the tool has been used 1 time, MP would automatically sign the T# as "negative". So the next time 'T123' is used, MP automatically makes 't$ = -123.'.

There was some logic in 'pwrtt$', that checked for 't$ > 0'. This is what prevented "duplicate" T# output.

You can do the same thing yourself, by just building a "Lookup Table". The issue is that a Lookup Table needs to have an "entry" in it, for any potential T# that you might use. It looks like you're using at least 150 tools, so you would need 150 lines in your lookup table. If you wanted to use T1 - T999, it would take a Lookup Table with just short of 1000 entries in the table.

This will likely be the "easiest" solution. Creating the Lookup Table is easy, it is just tedious if you have a lot of entries.

[THMProgram]

I'm not following how a lookup table would accomplish this.  Would it not be the same output for the tool number every time the table is used?  How would it output the information once then not the second time? 

 

[Colin Gilchrist]

A lookup table is used with MP Functions. One such Function is 'finc', which looks to Increment the value in the 2nd Column of the Table, based on the Entry in the first column.

So basically, you "execute" the function, and it returns the "incremented" value from the Lookup Table.

Here is some "psudeo-code", which demonstrates the concept:

return : 0
my_t   : 0


flktbl   4  10
         1   0
         2   0
         3   0
         4   0
         5   0
         6   0
         7   0
         8   0
         9   0
         10  0




ptooltable$
     my_t = t$ #Assign current T# to my_t
     return = finc(4, my_t)  #Look in the table. Return the "incremented" value from 2nd Column.
     if return = 1, #If "return = 1", then this is the 1st time the tool is used!
       [
       
       ]
     

So, you would only run your "write my date into the Tool Table output", when the "return" value is only 1. If the value is '2', or greater, then that indicates that the Tool Number has been used before.

Basically, each "use" of a tool (when you feed that t$ variable into the 'finc' function), would increment the values in the 2nd column of the lookup table.

The only thing that will "suck", is having to construct a Lookup Table with enough entries to handle all of the possible tool numbers you could use.

If you want to allow "T888", then you must have at least eight hundred and eighty eight entries in your table. If your "input parameter" into the 'finc' function is "greater" than the biggest value in your table, MP will give you a Posting Error.

In my example above, we can only handle Tool Numbers 1-10, because that is the limit of the size of my lookup table. If I built one with 1000 entries in the table, then we could handle T1 - T1000, but "T1001" would give an error.

 

[THMProgram]

That makes perfect sense.  Thank you.  Now I have to decide if it's worth creating a table for 1000 tools.

[Colin Gilchrist]

I decided to throw everyone who might want to do this a bone, and used Excel to build a 1000 entry table. I decided to make it Table Number 10, just to make it more "plug and play" with existing Posts. (That might already have 1, or 2 Lookup Tables.)

 

 

 

 

 

[crazy^millman]

Colin you mentioned the old way of MP making the tool negative in the background and the process of checking for negative tools could you make a process where you compared a current tool to any tool and if it were the same make it's number negative for the tool table output?

[Colin Gilchrist]

It helps if I post the table... Doh.

flktbl     10  1000
         1       0
         2       0
         3       0
         4       0
         5       0
         6       0
         7       0
         8       0
         9       0
        10       0
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       994       0
       995       0
       996       0
       997       0
       998       0
       999       0
      1000       0

 

[THMProgram]

I decided to use a buffer file and a while loop.  Seems to work...

ptooltable$				
				rc1=1
				size1=0
				tnote = tt_tool$
				tldia$=opinfo(10005, 0)
				write_tool=0
				ploop
				
               	if tt_tool$<>prv_tt_tool$ & write_tool<1,
                	[
                    	toffnote = tt_op_id$
                    	tlngnote = tt_tlngno$
                    	if tt_tool$ >= zero, "(", *tnote, ",", *tldia$,string_user
                    	if tt_tool$ >= zero, tcnt = tcnt + one
	                    if tt_speed$ <> zero & tt_tool$ >= zero, ")",e$
	                    if tt_speed$ = zero & tt_tool$ >= zero, " - - THIS TOOL HAS A ZERO SPEED ASSIGNED!!!!)", e$
                    	!tt_tool$
						
                	]
	           	opcount=opcount+one
               		pminmax
			tnote=wbuf(2,wc1)

ploop           #loop through the tool buffer looking for current tool
				size1 = rbuf(2,0)
				while rc1<= size1,
				[
				result2=rbuf(2,rc1)
				if result2 = tt_tool$, write_tool = write_tool+one
				]	

 

[THMProgram]

Also, the buffer is defined in the format section of the post as fbuf 2 0 1 0 0 and wc1 is defaulted to 1prior to the ptooltable$ call.

[THMProgram]

Mastercam responded to an enhancement request with the following:

"Hi,

You should be able to do this by evaluating tt_count$.  If tt_count$ is anything other than 1, then the tool hasn't been output yet (tt_count$ = 0), or has already been output (tt_count$ > 1).

Below is a very simple snippet showing this in use. 

ptooltable$

if tt_count$ = 1,

[

sopen_prn, *tt_tool$, sdelimiter, *tt_tlngno$, sclose_prn, e$

]"

 

[Colin Gilchrist]

So they did build a mechanism into the updated MP Language to handle this. Good to know. Did you happen to search the documentation for the 'tt_count' variable to see if it is documented? I don't have access to the MP Documentation while I'm at work.

[THMProgram]

It is documented.