Initiating and Using the BPM

The actions to initiate a background process are as follows:

1. In the Draft module, navigate to the VIEW (or SHEET or DRAWING) to be updated.

2. Set and save the viewing parameters, using a SAVEWORK command.

3. Issue an UPDATE Design NOWAIT command, normally via associated applicationware.

4. The system then creates an entry in the BPM queue and returns immediately for the next action.

5. Once started, the BPM reads the next entry in the queue and creates a ‘hidden’ Draft session running in the background to run the job. To avoid unlimited multiple copies of Draft being initiated, a process only starts after the previous one has finished. (How to start the BPM is described below.)

6. For each job the background Draft session performs a special UPDATE Design command that generates and stores each new VIEW in a separate intermediate view file or IVF. This is a picture file prefixed with the letter ‘X’ instead of the standard ‘M’.

7. Once the process has finished, a notification is raised, which is signalled by an icon in the Windows notification toolbar. Each background Draft session started by the BPM writes a standard log file to the PDMSWK folder. The log file has the same name as the initiating XML job file but with the .log extension.

8. You may then re-enter ‘foreground’ Draft and navigate back to the original VIEW (SHEET or DRAWING) to load the new picture. Each VIEW updated by the BPM will generate its own IVF. This enables you to refresh selected VIEWs only (or a SHEET or a DRAWING).

9. Issue an UPDATE REFRESH command to refresh the current VIEW (SHEET or DRAWING).

10. If the refreshed VIEWs are acceptable, you may save them permanently using a SAVEWORK, as usual.

    Note: If a refreshed VIEW is unacceptable, you should NOT issue a SAVEWORK to save it permanently. Instead, the original SHEET should be re-selected to re-load the old contents.

    Be careful to save any outstanding changes to other VIEWs in the same SHEET before refreshing another VIEW.

To start and use the Background Process Manager:

11. Initiate the BPM by invoking the BPM.bat start-up file.

12. The Background Process Manager form then appears, which displays details of each job together with its Status of ‘Not Started’ or ‘Finished’ and an exit code showing success or failure. See Managing Jobs using the Background Process Manager Form for further information of the Background Process Manager form.

13. Processing of ‘Not Started’ jobs is initiated from the Background Process Manager form. The form shows the job currently running and provides facilities to start job processing or stopping the current job, as required.

14. When one or more jobs appear in the job list, select the Start manager hyperlink to start the processing of jobs with Status ‘Not Started’. Note that the hyperlink changes to Stop manager at this point. The Background Process Manager form may be iconised at this point.

15. Once the process for a job has finished, the Background Process notification icon appears in the notification area on the Windows task bar.

16. The Background Process Manager form may then be restored, if necessary, to view the updated Status and Exit Codes. An exit code of ‘Success’ means that the updated VIEW (SHEET or DRAWING) can be refreshed into the foreground Draft session.

17. The Background Process Manager form can then be minimized and the Background Process notification icon cleared by right-clicking on it and then selecting the Clear Item option.

18. The next waiting job is then started automatically.

19. Once the BPM is in the ‘Stopped’ state it may be exited using the File>Exit menu selection.

A log file of the processing is saved to the PDMSWK folder and is called BPM_ddmmyyyy_hhmmss.log, where: ddmmyyyy is the standard date and hhmmss is the standard time that the process was started. The log file should contain a record of all processing in the Background Process session, including errors.