Overwriting mapkeys

[DomenicLaritz]

Hello CAD admins,

you probably also provide your users with a company-config.pro with standard mapkeys in the text directory of the Creo installation.
In our case it happens again and again that users create their own mapkeys (which is legitimate), but when saving them they manage to write out the complete company-config.pro into the local one in the home or start directory.
Since the local mapkeys have the sovereignty, the users do not get changes to the mapkeys in the company-config.pro anymore.
As far as I know, the default mapkeys can't be packed into a config.sup either, because then the users can't create their own mapkeys anymore.
How do you deal with the problem of overwritten default mapkeys?

Regards,

Domenic

[StephenW]

There were a few releases of Creo 4 that had the issue of always saving the entire "session config" to the user config.pro, since we moved past that, I haven't noticed that problem recently.

[DomenicLaritz]

That's an interesting fact that I didn't know.
Do you have more detailed information on this, such as a CS article or an SPR number?

[tbraxton]

In the context of using a config.sup with mapkey definitions two items are of interest in this context.

Excerpt from:

https://www.ptc.com/en/support/article/CS44710 

Mapkeys can be saved to the config.pro and work properly in session but when a new session is started the mapkeys do not operate
Mapkeys saved to config.pro work properly in current session only

This reads such that the users can overide config.sup mapkeys for the current session only. It would force them to manually save a local config.pro with mapkeys each time Creo is launched. This would prevent users from missing out on administrative changes to the config.sup without intentionally overriding them for each Creo session. I have not tested this.

There are also tools to detect mapkey mnemonic conflicts.

You could write a script that scans user local config.pro for mapkeys that conflict with corporate standards and either notify them and/or delete the conflicts in their config files in an automated fashion.

[Chris3 · Accepted solution]

We have a header / footer in our config.pro and then our startup script checks for that header and if it finds it, deletes everything until it gets to the footer (ie deleting the company config out of the user config)

! ++++++++++ START OF COMPANY CONFIGURATION FILE. ++++++++++

! IF YOU SEE THIS IN YOUR PERSONAL CONFIG.PRO DELETE FROM THE LINE ABOVE TO WHERE IT SAYS END.
!=================================================
!Max number of characters per row is 80 although mapkey(continued) doesn't count
!2345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890
!=================================================
!mapkey(continued)12345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890

! ++++++++++ END OF COMPANY CONFIGURATION FILE. ++++++++++

[joe_morton]

Does the company config file always get saved in the user's config as a single block? i.e., the users' settings don't get mixed inside the company settings? 

That is a really cool idea! I've wanted to develop code for that, but I though I'd have to check each config setting.

[Chris3]

It is a single block but it can start anywhere (1st line, in the middle, etc). The config.sup can also get copied in so keep that in mind.

If you are going to try and implement this one of the headaches I had was that PTC adds a Byte order mark (BOM) to the beginning of the config.pro file. This means if you try and check the first line with a batch file you are going to get goofy output characters because batch doesn't know how to deal with the special characters.

To solve this issue I simply added new first line that says something like "!!!! User Config.pro !!!" so I could skip over that line which included the BOM characters.

[DomenicLaritz]

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@tbraxton wrote:

This reads such that the users can overide config.sup mapkeys for the current session only. It would force them to manually save a local config.pro with mapkeys each time Creo is launched. This would prevent users from missing out on administrative changes to the config.sup without intentionally overriding them for each Creo session. I have not tested this.

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The big problem is that users can create private mapkeys in a session and save them in their config.pro, but when the next session starts, they are ignored and not available again.
And I don't want to take away anyone's freedom to create their own mapkeys.

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@tbraxton wrote:

There are also tools to detect mapkey mnemonic conflicts.

You could write a script that scans user local config.pro for mapkeys that conflict with corporate standards and either notify them and/or delete the conflicts in their config files in an automated fashion.

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Where can I find these tools?
Link or it didn't happen. 😉

@ocorten-2, do you maybe know such config.pro cleanup tools?

[ocorten-2]

Well, there is a config.pro check utility on my site https://creosite.com/index.php/configuration/config-pro-check/

But you will have to merge the company config.pro with the users config.pro and upload the merged config.pro.

It will then find all conflicting mapkeys (and more).

[Chris3]

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Where can I find these tools?

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The tools that are being referenced are scripts that companies write (batch, vbs, etc). Usually they are unique to an organization and you will need to write your own.

[DomenicLaritz]

I have just found a suitable product enhancement idea from 2016 for my problem:

"Allow Mapkeys in both config.sup and config.pro"

Maybe you can support my request and push the idea with your vote - thanks in advance for your support!

[DomenicLaritz]

The product enhancement idea now has the status "Delivered".
According to @mneumueller there came a solution for this problem with Creo Parametric 11.0: https://community.ptc.com/t5/Creo-Parametric-Ideas/Allow-Mapkeys-in-both-config-sup-and-config-pro/idc-p/944496/highlight/true#M20691