Innovation Intelligence ® 1 Chapter 2: The HyperWorks Desktop Environment

Copyright © 2012 Altair Engineering, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved. 22 HyperWorks Desktop Environment - Overview Framework Overview Command Layer Sample Session Object Hierarchy Documentation Command Window

Copyright © 2012 Altair Engineering, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved. 33 HyperWorks Desktop Environment - Framework Overview HyperWorks Desktop framework contains: HyperView MotionView HyperGraph HyperGraph 3D TextView MediaView FE Model Other HyperWorks applications that can be accessed through the HyperWorks Desktop: HyperMesh Manufactoring Solutions Data Manager ProcessManager HyperStudy OptiStruct

Copyright © 2012 Altair Engineering, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved. 44 HyperWorks Desktop Environment - Framework Overview

Copyright © 2012 Altair Engineering, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved. 55 HyperWorks Desktop Environment - Framework Overview Tcl/Tk is the scripting language used to customize the HyperWorks Desktop Environment. Upon launching, the Tcl/Tk interpreter is automatically initialized and a set of commands are created to form the command layer inside the framework. Every client in the HyperWorks Desktop framework has a command associated with it. Each of these commands is created when the respective client is loaded. “post”  Animation client “hwplot”  HyperGraph 2D client “plot3d”  HyperGraph 3D client “texteditor”  TextView client “video”  MediaView client “model”  MotionView client

Copyright © 2012 Altair Engineering, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved. 66 HyperWorks Desktop Environment - Framework Overview What is a macro? Tool, utility, or a set of functions that perform a particular action – or a set of actions Tcl scripts that are created using Tcl must have a name with “.tcl” extension. To activate a particular Macro, the user must use the source command. For example, a Macro named my_macro.tcl, use the following command: source my_macro.tcl

Copyright © 2012 Altair Engineering, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved. 77 HyperWorks Desktop Environment – Command Layer The Command Layer is formed from native Tcl/Tk commands and a set of HyperWorks Desktop specific commands Accessible and available to all clients available inside the HyperWorks Desktop framework. Follow a simple and consistent syntax. The command layer can basically be broken into two main levels common level client specific level The same commands are used to get to the client level and after that, a separate set commands exist for each client.

Copyright © 2012 Altair Engineering, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved. 88 HyperWorks Desktop Environment – Command Layer All commands are object-centric, meaning that you must have an object to which a command can be applied. The basic command syntax is: {object_name} {command} {command parameter(s)} These commands fall into four categories Handle Commands Operation Commands Property Commands List Commands

Copyright © 2012 Altair Engineering, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved. 99 HyperWorks Desktop Environment – Command Layer The HyperWorks database consists of a hierarchy of objects The foundation is the hwi (HyperWorks Interface) object Automatically created. The hwi command provides access to the hwISession object and a few high level utilities. HyperWorks supports only one session per run and one project per session. The session object can be retrieved by using the following command hwi GetSessionHandle session1 NOTE: session1 is the handle name which is an arbitrary name chosen by the user

Copyright © 2012 Altair Engineering, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved. 10 HyperWorks Desktop Environment – Sample Session Sample session with 2 pages:

Copyright © 2012 Altair Engineering, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved. 11 HyperWorks Desktop Environment – Sample Session Example: Get to “Page 2” and set its title to “My page” session1 GetProjectHandle project1 project1 GetPageHandle page2 2 page2 SetTitle “My page” Client type is assigned to a window A window's client type cannot be changed after the client handle has been retrieved. The client handle must be released and retrieved again if the window's client type is changed. Example: Get to window 1 in page 1 and set the client type to animation project1 GetPageHandle page1 1 page1 GetWindowHandle win1 1 win1 SetClientType "Animation"

Copyright © 2012 Altair Engineering, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved. 12 HyperWorks Desktop Environment – Object Hierarchy The first level is common to all clients and applies at the framework level

Copyright © 2012 Altair Engineering, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved. 13 HyperWorks Desktop Environment – Object Hierarchy The second level is unique to each client inside HyperWorks Desktop. Commands may have the same syntax, it doesn’t mean that they are common to other clients. Efforts have been made to keep consistency for similar command keep things simple easier to learn An example: SetColor or SetLabel command Find them available in more than one object and in different clients.

Copyright © 2012 Altair Engineering, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved. 14 HyperWorks Desktop Environment – Object Hierarchy Animation Client Object Hierarchy

Copyright © 2012 Altair Engineering, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved. 15 HyperWorks Desktop Environment – Object Hierarchy Plot 2D Client Object Hierarchy

Copyright © 2012 Altair Engineering, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved. 16 HyperWorks Desktop Environment – Documentation Documentation in Online Help Programming with Tcl/Tk Commands

Copyright © 2012 Altair Engineering, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved. 17 HyperWorks Desktop Environment – Command Window To access Tcl/Tk and the command layer inside HyperWorks Desktop, launch the Command Window Click on Views menu item and then choose Command Window Provides an interactive environment and it also allows users to load and save file TCL files, also known and scripts, as well as saving a history of recent commands or scripts.

Copyright © 2012 Altair Engineering, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved. 18 HyperWorks Desktop Environment – Command Window Working with Command Window: To load a script (TCL file), use File  Load File menu item, or you can simply type “source filename.tcl” in the console. When typing a handle, you can use the tab key for auto-complete feature. Text highlighting is supported. All global commands are highlighted in green and error code is highlighted in red. You can click on an error (red text) to launch a new window displaying the stack trace; this is very useful feature for debugging purposes. Use the Up/Down arrow keys to go through commands in the history All menu items are accessible via pop up menu using the right mouse button Copy and paste is supported via menu items, but also available by highlighting any text and then using the middle mouse button to paste (similar to UNIX functionality) Use clear command to clear all text form the console

Copyright © 2012 Altair Engineering, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved. 19 Exercise 2.1 Changing the Client Type using the Command Window

Copyright © 2012 Altair Engineering, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved. 20 HyperWorks Desktop Environment – Exercise Exercise 2a Description: Start HyperWorks Desktop and launch the command window. By typing commands inside the console, set the page title to “my first page”. Change the client type to Plot 2D. Save a history file and then load the history file to re-run the same commands. Handles used session, project, page, window TCL/TK commands used set Hints No hints are necessary.