Personal ISOGEN will invoke the external application passing it the name of a data file containing the current job data on the command line:

<path>XAPP1.EXE C:\TEMP\PISOGEN.INI

The External Application must

1. 1. Parse the command line, open and parse the data file and take whatever action is required.

2. 2. Terminate within the specified time out (or the default of 60 seconds).

The External Application must not

1. 1. Interfere in the running of the Personal ISOGEN job. For example, it must not delete or move or lock the ISOGEN input file.

Example: Contents of PISOGEN.INI

The following is the first line in the file to indicate which stage has produced the data file:

PROCESSING-STAGE [PRE-PROCESSOR|POST-PROCESSOR]

The following provides some basic information about the Personal ISOGEN environment:

PERSONAL-ISOGEN-VERSION 4.3.3

The following provides some basic information about the ISOGEN/IDFGEN environment but is only generated for the post processor stage:

ISOGEN-VERSION 8.7.0

IDFGEN-VERSION 5.5.0

ISOGEN-MODE [FULL|DEMO|I-GEN]

This section is generated for the pre and post processor stages:

INPUT-FILE D:\projects2\DXF5\INPUTS\PIPE-001-D3.pcf

FLS-FILE D:\projects2\DXF5\Final\ISOGEN.FLS

ISOMETRIC-DIRECTORY D:\projects2\

PROJECT-NAME DXF5

STYLE-NAME Final

This section is only generated for the post processor stage:

MESSAGE-FILE D:\projects2\DXF5\Final\MESSAGES\FINAL.MES

RETURN-CODE 0

RETURN-MESSAGE No errors

DRAWING-COUNT 2

DRAWING-NAME-01 D:\projects2\DXF5\Final\DRAWINGS\PIPE-001-D3T.DXF

DRAWING-NAME-02 D:\projects2\DXF5\Final\DRAWINGS\PIPE-001-D3U.DXF

Implementation Notes

Error Codes/Messages Returned by Pre-Processing Stage

There are 4 pre-defined return codes and corresponding messages relating to the initialisation/termination of the external application. These are generated by Personal ISOGEN.

EXTERNAL_PROCESS_CREATION_FAILURE -1001

EXTERNAL_PROCESS_CRASH -1002

EXTERNAL_PROCESS_TIMEOUT_TERMINATION_SUCCESS -1003

EXTERNAL_PROCESS_TIMEOUT_TERMINATION_FAILURE -1004

The application can return any code and this will be reported. A return code of anything other than 0 will be treated as a failure.

Working Directory

The initial working directory will be set to the location of the application executable assuming a path has been supplied. If it has not, the process will probably not run as it will be unlikely to find the executable.

Execution Time

The Pre/Post processing only executes in the pigen call of the PISOGEN.DLL. It does not fire for the pisogen (Version 7 compatible) or pigenIDFGEN (IDFGEN only) calls.