Icon that launces external program...

[DarrinHiebert]

Is it possible to have an icon in Pro that would launch something like a
spreadsheet? A spreadsheet that has nothing to do with the model at hand.
No parameters would be passed back and forth. I just need it to start
Excel, and open up a specific spreadsheet (for editing). One other thing.
Is this possible WITHOUT Pro/Toolkit? That's something that we don't have.

I know that I can do this in the main HTML window, the one that pops up when
you first start Pro. We'd like an icon that would do the same thing if
possible...

WF 2.0

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[unknown1]

Darrin,

I have an icon-driven mapkey that launches Windows Explorer for my
current working directory. It uses a system call and looks like this
(note the single "." after explorer.exe):

mapkey explore @MAPKEY_NAMEOpens NT Explorer for current working
directory;\
mapkey(continued) @MAPKEY_LABELExplore Current Dir;\
mapkey(continued) @SYSTEMstart "Opening Explorer" explorer.exe
.;

You can do the same with Excel:

mapkey excel @MAPKEY_NAMEOpens spreadsheet.xls in Excel;\
mapkey(continued) @MAPKEY_LABELOpen spreadsheet.xls;\
mapkey(continued) @SYSTEMstart "Opening Excel" "C:\\Program
Files\\Microsoft \
mapkey(continued) Office\\Office10\\EXCEL.EXE"
"spreadsheet.xls";

Key points here are:

* Either put in your full program path or set a Windows
environment path to your Office installation directory.
* Put in double forward-slashes in the place of singles so that
Pro/E doesn't think it's the end of a line.
* If the line runs too long (96 characters), put in a single
forward slash and continue on the next line as I show above.
* Of course, put in whatever path you need for your worksheet,
making sure to follow the two previous points.

Enjoy. (I've copied this to the group as I think it's fairly helpful
info.)

Caleb Coburn
Mechanical Engineer
Roche Diagnostics