NetHook life in Memory

[rocheey1]

I seem to recall somewhere that CHooks, and NetHooks run from an .ft file, stay in memory after running. If this is the case, would it also mean that

NetHooks either run from "Run User Application" menu, or a NetHook called from another NetHook, are released from memory after they are run ?

 

What Im hoping to do is have the ability to update SOME netHooks without needing to shut down MasterCam ....

[Roger Martin from CNC Software]

Sorry for the delay as I just noticed this posting...

 

A NETHook is .NET Assembly and being so cannot be "unloaded" as you can with a native (CHook) DLL.

This is a limitation of .NET

 

Google -> "unload .net assembly" and note the top hits...

Yes they are old, but that doesn't mean "out of date" !

 

 

From Jason Zander

Corporate Vice President for the Visual Studio team in the Developer Division at Microsoft.

Why isn't there an Assembly.Unload method?

 

Looking further down in the retrieved pages you'll see mention of using an AppDomain in order to be able to "unload" an Assembly.

There are downsides to that method, which in our case override the need to be able to unload an individuality Assembly while Mastercam is running.

[rocheey1]

I mentioned this because I had plans to call a .dll from my post. My concerns were that either from a slowly growing .dll size as it REVs, and/or being called many , many times, that it would bloat up in MasterCam, hogging memory. And also I would lose the ability to dynamically update, without shutting down MasterCam (Its always a fight here to see who gets the MILL 3 licenses )

 

Ive since used the 'Launch' command from my post, calling an external .exe. Now I should (hopefully) be able to update at will.

 

Thanx.

[Roger Martin from CNC Software]

Once the NETHook has been run once either by command (or "loaded" via an FT file command),

Mastercam is not going to try to load it again the next time it's run.

In other words, run it as many times as you want and Mastercam will only "load" one copy of the .NET Assembly.