Testing of BricsCAD (GUI)

Marc Seefeldt

Hi,

i am new to BricsCAD and our company wants to develop a new tool on the
basis of BricsCAD.

When looking at the testing part, the following question came to my mind:
Is it possible to test our new tool with GUIDancer/Jubula?

(Those are GUI testing tools which access the graphics components instead
of the physical layout, thus making tests reproducable and easy to develop.)

If not, what kind of tools are commonly used to test BricsCAD and connected
applications/exensions?

Many thanks in advance,

Marc Seefeldt

James Maeding

GUIDancer? Is that a relative of the Necromancer?

I just googled that and it looks to be compatible with .net, which is one of the main languages you would program 3rd party tools in for acad/bcad.

Sounds like the tool can pick controls and do actions on a GUI.

Keep in mind acad/bcad have command lines, and users doing production get sick of picking buttons, they type commands - usually short-cutted to two characters.

I do a lot of tools in AutoLisp, which does not yet have a debugger for bcad. .Net is likely the way to go for you, so that is not an issue.

I don't get what good a GUI tester is though, if you cannot step into the code behind. I have a feeling I do not understand GUIDancer so I'd love to hear how it works.

Marc Seefeldt

Hi James,

first of all, GUIdancer is not related to Necromancer in the Diablo III fashion, more in the William Gibson way.

We plan to use BricsCAD as a part of our new tool and we will implement quite some additonal parts.
I am aware that there are users that use the console, but in our case the people are more happy
to draw lines with a mouse and add attributes by clicking dropdown menus.

In order to ensure a certain level of quality we need to test our GUI interactions and the functions behind it.
And for this case it is better to replace the man behind the computer by a computer behind the computer. This is also
good since the tests can run regularly as regression test, even during nightly build.
So we get a write once, run many times way of testing all GUI interactions.
Those tests either fail or succeed, there is no need for manual debugging here.

Have you ever tried to wrap a new tool around BricsCAD, that uses it for the drawing part (maybe as COM object)
and remote control BricsCAD with COM?

Have a nice day,
Marc

@James Maeding:

GUIDancer? Is that a relative of the Necromancer?

I don't get what good a GUI tester is though, if you cannot step into the code behind. I have a feeling I do not understand GUIDancer so I'd love to hear how it works.

James Maeding

Can you elaborate on a task you want to do in this program?

I have done many programs for acad amd bcad that access dwg's without opening them in an editor.

My programs generally run from a session of bcad that is open, as I write in autolisp and c#.

If you want to read and write dwgs without an open session of cad, you must use the "realdwg" api for acad or equivalent for bcad.

Its the same api as C#, but can run without an open session. No gui there, so does not sound like what you want.

You can open a session, then control it from the outside, there are many examples of that. The most common activity that does that is batching tools.

I think the .net code for the latest acad batch scripter is available, check Kean's ThroughTheInterface blog or google.

In general, you will not find a cad program with more apis than acad and bcad, so you are on the right track.

Marc Seefeldt

Hi James,

i have as well google'd a bit and i think the better term is:

We want to embed BricsCAD into our application.
The GUI of BricsCAD shall be completely usable (we will adapt it to our needs) and BricsCAD
as such will be extended as well.

The idea is as follows:
Our application is started, the user authenticates itself and selects a drawing from the list
of available drawings. This list comes from an external database where all drawing are store and
the version control of the drawings is handled.
After the selection of the drawing BricsCAD is fired up inside a new window/or part of the main application window
and the user can edit the drawing as if he would be working on a standalone BricsCAD.
As soon as he saves and/or exits the embedded BrisCAD, our application takes over again.
It retrieves the changed drawing and stores it in the external database.

I think having the code for the authentication, version control and listing of the drawings inside BricsCAD would be
a hard thing to do and therefore we like the idea of embedding BricsCAD inside our application.

What do you think, is this feasible?

Many thanks for your help and the time spent,
Marc Seefeldt

James Maeding

Sure, you are making a doc mgmt system. I'd have to think about catching the close event of the doc, as closing the doc and session are two different things. You need control of the profile too, as we have a company one and do not want ootb one running. Use /p I think in open statement.

There are a couple options for how far you want to embed things. You can just run a session that you manage, or can build your own interface with the OEM stuff available. I have seen that done from acad side, I believe the same is available for opendwg alliance side.

One approach I use on doc mgmt is a .net filesystemwatcher. If you open a dwg, set up a watcher to the file being edited, and do something when date modified changes. Then you can almost disregard managing the cad side. Anything any program does will get noticed.

Valentin Lishkov

I'm looking bricscad Api for Sheet Metal
Does anyone know such a thing
lwm@abv.bg