Shortcut for inserting current date?

[dcox-2]

Does anyone know if there is a quick way to enter the current date in a text field on a drawing? Something like CTRL+; as in Excel would be ideal, we often have to enter the current date multiple times on a drawing so I'm just after a way to save a bit of time. Maybe there's some mapkey magic that can be worked?

Obviously typing in "&todays_date" rather than "07/Jan/15" doesn't really help...

Thanks,

Dave

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[Dale_Rosema]

You could always make a single finger multiple stroke mapkey - (e.g. "dddd") - for &todays_date - a few less key strokes, but quick for button mashers.

[dcox-2]

That does get me part of the way there - some places where the date goes are just plain table cells, so I made a slightly ropey mapkey to set the cell value to &todays_date.

However there are also places in the drawing border that report back parameters from the part (not drawing params). If I try to set the value of say the date_checked param to &todays_date, it just displays "&todays_date", not the actual date. There may be a way to change that, but I don't know it.

Because I'm not always setting the same date to the same params, trying to do some relation like date_checked = todays_date isn't really going to be of any use either.

Hence it would be nice if I could just use a brief couple of keystrokes, and have the date appear at the cursor's location. I suspect that if there is a way to do this, implementing could be more trouble than it's worth, but I thought I'd ask the question anyway and see what comes out.

[dcox-2]

Yes, provided I'm not using the clipboard for something else, which I often am.

[MartinHanak · Accepted solution]

David,

I hope that AutoIt or AutoHotkey software enables user with programming knowledge to create personal tool, which takes current time from operation system, converts it to string and put this string into edited drawing text.

Unfortunatelly I don't have enough time to develop such tool .

Martin Hanak

[dcox-2]

Hi Martin,

I know of these tools, though have never used them. It probably is the best way for what I want to do, so I'll look into it.

Thanks,
Dave

[dcox-2]

Ok, so that was extremely easy, used AutoHotkey and 5 minutes later I have a result and a feeling that AutoHotkey might be my new best friend. Thanks for the suggestion.

Dave

[TomD.inPDX]

Is there a place that lists all the hidden &PTC_<parameter> for drawings and models?

[Dale_Rosema]

Probably not otherwise they wouldn't be hidden......

[TomD.inPDX]

You know what I mean... the parameters you can use to search on that begin with PTC_ so that you can use them in formats, search, or mode/drawing trees.