Drawing mode - Mapkey with Refit command should not change active ribbon

[fmueller]

Mapkey causes unwanted ribbon jump

We recorded a mapkey with the refit command. Since we are using Creo, this mapkey is rather useless, because it causes more clicks than it saves. If I run this mapkey the active ribbon suddenly jumps to the "view" ribbon.

As described in Document - CS55084 it is described that this is the standard behaviour of Creo mapkeys in general.
However it is still a very annoying behaviour!

Creo works different, when I am clicking to the same command button in the quickstart-toolbar or the view-toolbar. So I really can't understand why the behaviour should be different just because it's a mapkey.

Even for mapkeys with different commands - in my opinion a mapkey should not change the active ribbon as I want a mapkeys to get a quick access to any command without changeing the active GUI-environment.

[breed]

I like your idea. If you know what tab you want to return to you can add it to the mapkey. Not a solution but it can help avoid some of the frustration

[fmueller]

Hm, sounds good. If I only had an idea how to tell the mapkey to return to any ribbon which was active just before I started the mapkey.

[breed]

Yes, it would be nice if we could use if statements in mapkeys. In my case 80% of the time we want to go back to the model tab so I figure getting to the right tab 80% is better than nothing. Lets hope the implament your idea.

[dgschaefer]

I'm curious about this because I have my F4 key recorded as refit and it has no affect on the active ribbon. I recorded it simply by selecting refit from the mini toolbar floating in the top center of model area (I've forgotten what that one is called).

Is your refit command recorded from this toolbar?  Is it the refit command only or is it one command in a string of others in a longer mapkey?

[breed]

Maybe I don't understand. The issue I am seeing is that if I select a ribbon tab and then click an option in that tab and then stop the mapkey when I run the mapkey I am taken to the tab I was on when I recorded the mapkey. So if your mapkey does not touch the ribbon you will not see this issue. Fore example lets say I am working on a part and I am in the model tab I then run a mapkey that mapkey opens the tools tab and opens the parameters dialog. When the mapkey is done running I am on the tools tab even though I was working in the model tab.

[dgschaefer]

So it's not so much about the refit command, but about how mapkeys work in general.  The idea of a mapkey is that it replays the commands as if you executed them yourself.  The assumed limitations then are

1. The mapkey starts in the current context and therefore, depending on how it's recorded, may not work properly in every context.  You couldn't run a mapkey that displays a section,for example, while in sketcher because you cannot access the section tab of the view manager while in sketcher.
2. The mapkey ends in the same context it did when recorded.

I would think that the mapkey functionality would have to be substantially altered to capture the current UI context and store it, run the mapkey and then restore the pre-existing context.  This might be problematic depending on what the mapkey does.

[breed]

Depending on how it was implemented there could be complications for example if you wanted the tab to end on a specific tab that was different than the start tab you could have some problems. Maybe it would be usefull to have the ability to detect settings. For example if you could detect the active tab when the mapkey is started and then store that tab in a veriable you could then activate that tab as the last step in the mapkey. Maybe im getting into the relm of the API for creo but it would be nice to have some basic scripting abilities in Mapkeys.

[fmueller]

@Doug:

Recording the mapkey from the toolbar is a good idea BUT with Creo2 M040 is simply doesn't work - at least not in drawing mode.

@Brian & Doug:

Before recording a mapkey I always put the wanted command in the quick-access-toolbar, so that I do not record any ribbon change while recording the mapkey. However it is anyway if I record the refit via the quick access or the toolbar it is always the same command:

mapkey $F3 @MAPKEY_LABELModel or Drawing refit to window;\

mapkey(continued) ~ Command `ProCmdViewRefit`;

This works nice in assembly and part mode but NOT in the drawing mode. Only there the ribbon jumps to View ("Ansicht" in german)

[dgschaefer]

I just verified this behavior.  My F4 mapkey works great in all modes, but in drawing mode only it changes the active tab to the view tab.

I'd say that's not a needed enhancement, it's a bug that needs fixed.  They will claim intended functionality, ask for them to document that it's intended to work differently in different modes and that playing the mapkey would result in different behavior than recording the mapkey.  They will not be able to.

I was told a few years ago by the head of PTC tech support that when we got the standard 'intended functionality' response to ask for documentation.  If it's intended, they should be able to produce it.