dbMASS 4.7
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This file documents the enhancements and problem fixes provided with dbMASS version 4.7. Please read to stay up to date on these developments.


CONTENTS

----------------------------------------------- Version / Published

------------------------------------------------- 4.70 / September 2, 2003

  1. New Features
    1. dbMASS Clip Assist
    2. Color Palette Fix

------------------------------------------------- 4.71 / December 5, 2003

  1. dbMASS Print Screen

------------------------------------------------- 4.72 / March 25, 2004

  1. CATIA Version 5 Support

------------------------------------------------- 4.73 / May 3, 2004

  1. Bug Fixes
    1. Uncertainty Update

------------------------------------------------- 4.74 / October 7, 2004

  1. Specific Custom Report Problem

------------------------------------------------- 4.75 / August 17, 2005

  1. MS Word Macro Installation Problem
  1. More New Features
    1. USB WIBU-Key Support

------------------------------------------------- 4.76 / October 12, 2006

  1. Window Highlight Colors
  1. More Bug Fixes
    1. Print Screen Colors
    2. Print Screen Keys

------------------------------------------------- 4.78 / February 27, 2007

  1. Balance Weight Material
  2. Clipboard Copy
  3. Entries Window Lookup Error

 


1. New Features

The following documents the new dbMASS Clip Assist application and changes made to dbMASS to address a UI color issue.

  1. dbMASS Clip Assist

dbMASS Clip Assist is a 32 bit Windows application that works with the latest version of dbMASS to restore a feature that was lost with Windows NT and to extend upon it. In the earlier Windows operating systems, dbMASS supported copying information to the Clipboard via the Copy Icon (or by keyboard with [Ctrl]-[c]). However, Windows NT does not support this feature. So dbMASS Clip Assist was developed to restore this feature. Now you can, once again, display a report and click on the Copy Icon and the report will be placed on the Windows clipboard ready to paste into other applications. Furthermore, this capability can now be setup to occur automatically. dbMASS Clip Assist can be configured to monitor for new reports, independently enabled for each of the three different report formats. When a report is created it automatically is copied to the clipboard, eliminating the need to display the report to accomplish this.

Another advantage of using dbMASS Clip Assist is that the old technique for copying reports to the clipboard was limited to 64 Kbytes. This new approach does not have this limitation. Also, if you are working with a version of Microsoft Office that supports Office Clipboard, multiple reports can be stored to the clipboard at a time. So with Clip Assist you can create a series of reports in dbMASS and have them waiting for you in the clipboard when you switch to Microsoft Word or Excel.

dbMASS Clip Assist is intended to automatically start when you login to Windows. The application will appear as a small icon in the Windows Taskbar in the Notification Area (where the clock is displayed). It is an event driven application which sits idle most of the time. There should be no overhead or performance concerns with having this application running all of the time. Should you need to restart it, you can also manually select the shortcut found in the Startup folder on the Start/Programs menu.

While it is running you will see the icon shown below (circled) in the Notification Area of the taskbar:

CAicon.gif (2481 bytes)

You will rarely need to interact with dbMASS Clip Assist directly but when you do you will access it through this icon. You can either right mouse click on the icon to bring up its menu or you can double click on it to go directly to the Settings dialog. The menu has three picks: Settings..., About... and Exit.

CAmenu.gif (1306 bytes)

Selecting the Settings... menu will open the Settings dialog shown below:

CASettings.gif (6522 bytes)

As you can see there are two areas in the dialog. The top one should display the path of the dbMASS folder. This path should include the drive letter as shown above with the default path. You should verify this setting when it is first installed. dbMASS Clip Assist cannot do its magic if it is not correctly set. Once set, you should not need to modify it unless your dbMASS installation is changed.

The second area, Auto Load Clipboard, is an area you may occasionally want to modify. This specifies which of the three dbMASS report formats you want automatically copied to the clipboard. Simply click on the box to enable/disable the particular formats. You can close the dialog either by selecting the [OK] or [Cancel] button. Selecting [OK] will apply any changes made.

The About... menu pick opens the About Dialog which gives the product version and copyright information. It also provides a brief description of its purpose.

CAabout.gif (7943 bytes)

The last menu pick exits the application. Do not select this unless you want to close the application.

We hope that you find this application has a transparent usefulness that you won't want to do without.

Contents

  1. Color Palette Fix

A display color problem which occurred on some systems has been remedied. Previously, some display adapters would change the dbMASS palette when you toggled from dbMASS to the Window Desktop and back again. Let us know if you experience any further problems in this area.

Contents


  1. dbMASS Print Screen

A new feature has been added to dbMASS which provides the print screen functionality previously provided by the operating system (OS). The [Print Screen] or [PrtScr] key has been used in the Windows OS to copy an image of the displayed screen to the clipboard. This can be used to capture the dbMASS display to paste the image into Microsoft Word or other documents. Some problems with this functionality started with Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 2000. The image in the clipboard was always one [print screen] behind. In other words, to get the active dbMASS screen in the clipboard one had to hit the [print screen] key and exit dbMASS and then go back into dbMASS and hit the [print screen] key again. The second print screen actually loaded the image from the first print screen into the clipboard. This was annoying at best. However, with Windows XP the print screen feature completely stopped working with dbMASS. Microsoft has been made aware of the problem and may fix it in a future release. The Windows XP failure was the impetus for creating the new dbMASS Print Screen capability.

The following configuration is required to use the new dbMASS Print Screen feature:

  1. dbMASS version 4.71 or later
  2. dbMASS Clip Assist version 1.1 or later
  3. Windows Shortcut key for PrtScr and Alt+PrtScr unchecked. This property setting applies to the shortcut used to start dbMASS. To access this setting right mouse click on the shortcut (or Start menu item) used to start dbMASS and select "Properties" from the pop-up menu. Near the bottom of the "Misc" tab sheet you will find the Windows shortcut key settings.

To capture the dbMASS display you must first depress and hold down the [Ctrl] key and then press and release the [Print Screen] key. The image transfer takes from 3 to 5 seconds. You will notice an activity bar scrolling in the top right corner of the dbMASS screen while this transfer is occurring. Wait until the scrolling has stopped before switching to Windows to access the saved clipboard image.

If you are still running dbMASS on Windows 95, 98 or Millennium Edition, you do not need to use the dbMASS Print Screen feature. You can continue to use the Windows provided print screen feature.

Contents


  1. CATIA Version 5 Support

The CATIA import translator has been updated to support CATIA version 5. To support this new version of CATIA the intermediate file format used to transfer data to dbMASS was updated and is now consistent with the format used for ProEngineer. The new intermediate file extension used is "ct5". The old format will continue to be supported using the "cta" extension. The implementation for the CATIA version 5 is accessed the same way as previously accessed with the "Import CATIA" database maintenance command. The only change you will see when importing a CATIA file is in the Path Window; both "cta" and "ct5" files will be listed. The appropriate interpreter will be determined based on the file extension.

Contents


2. Bug Fixes

  1. Uncertainty Update

A problem was identified and corrected in the flow up of uncertainty data. The issue only applies to cases where a part had its uncertainty automatically assigned (linked to contingency assignment) as percentage values and then was later viewed with the Uncertainty Window. If while viewing the data the view mode was changed from percentage to actual values and then left as actual values when the window was closed, the values are updated as actual values. This normally should not be a problem. The problem was that the flow up logic still treated the uncertainty as percentage values.

Note that whatever the view mode is when the Uncertainty Window is closed is maintained. Do not leave in actual value mode if you still want the uncertainties to automatically adjust for changes to the mass properties as they do when in percentage mode.

Contents


  1. Specific Custom Report Problem

A problem was identified and corrected in the handling of a custom report condition. This problem would cause dbMASS to crash or freeze the system. The specific conditions which would cause this problem require a particular report layout style, format and entry data. To follow are the detail conditions required. First off, the custom report layout needs to have the class fields as the basis of the sort. Secondly, the report layout needs to include the "Sub Elements" section (entry details) and either a "Leading Grand Total" or "Trailing Grand Total" section. Then the entry being reported on must contain at least one entry that does not have mass, has no category assigned and their immediate parent must have the overall top level category of the class field as its assigned category. Then finally, the selected report format needs to be either comma or tab delimited. Under these specific conditions a memory overwrite error occurred which would likely cause the system to freeze or otherwise crash.

Contents


  1. MS Word Macro Installation Problem

A problem was identified and corrected with the file used to install the Microsoft Word dbMASS Report Macros on Windows XP machines. The installation file "InstalXP.doc" has been updated to eliminate the Visual Basic error that would occur: "Compile Error: Can't find project or library." Please verify that you have the latest file should you experience this problem. The time stamp on this updated file is 11/14/2005 1:52 PM.

3. More New Features

  1. USB WIBU-Key Support

dbMASS now supports using USB WIBU-Keys and will continue to support the parallel port devices. The USB device is smaller and often more convenient to use then the parallel port device. The size and weight of the USB device is less than 15% of the parallel port device. It looks much like a small memory stick often used on today's computer systems. There is no perceivable performance difference between the devices.

Contents


  1. Window Highlight Colors

dbMASS uses an off-white background on its windows that makes it easier on the eyes for extended viewing. However, often when one wishes to include dbMASS screen shots in documents it would be nice to be able to have the off-white a brighter white. You can control this in dbMASS via the following hidden commands:

[Alt] [W] Turn on bright white for all window white areas and active window labels
[Alt] [L] Turn on bright white for active window labels only (instead of bright cyan normally used)
[Alt] [G] Reset to dbMASS default colors

 

 

 

Note: The key strokes are sequential, [Alt] key pressed and released and then the command key stroke. This feature was mistakenly disabled in a previous release.

Contents


4. More Bug Fixes

  1. Print Screen Colors

The palette used during the print screen operation was slightly different than the dbMASS display colors. This has been corrected. Now the print screen image should be the same as seen in the dbMASS screen. The image also now reflects any change in window highlight colors. Furthermore, the annoying change of the dbMASS window headers to blue when exiting or returning to dbMASS seen on some systems has been fixed.

  1. Print Screen Keys

The dbMASS print screen enhancements added with dbMASS v4.71 have not been working on Windows 2000 so a fix has been added that will work on all systems. Now [Ctrl]+[P] or [Ctrl]+[S] can be used to invoke this feature. These two optional key strokes make using the print screen feature easier and more reliable because they can be used without making any modifications to the default dbMASS shortcut. Please refer to the previous discussion on this topic for more information.

Contents


  1. Balance Weight Material

In the process of balancing an entry (using the Balance Module) a material selection is made. The material selection process previously mistakenly allowed the selection of a group material which should not have been allowed. Now only actual materials may be selected.

  1. Clipboard Copy

A problem with clipboard copy operations was fixed. Specifically, the last character of whatever was being copied was dropped in the copy process.

  1. Entries Window Lookup Error

A "Lookup error" that would sometimes occur within the Entries Window was identified and corrected.

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