A while back I was asking in the customization group about a way to get a date
and time stamp into an .idw file.  Attending an Autodesk University course
I cornered the instructor, Brian Ekins, and he gave me some help.  I now have something that runs well.  With Brian's encouragement I am posting it to
customer-files and a site that hosts other customization files.  I'm calling it TimeStamp.

It is written as an Add-in.  When a Save or Save Copy As is invoked it
gets the system date and time and feeds it in to a Custom Property, named
TimeStamp, that I have added to my title block and it gets placed on the
drawing.


Instructions:

1) In Windows: 

- use a .txt editor to examine the .bat file included.  I have
  made this .bat file for others at our company to install this addin.  
  The .bat file points to directories that we use at our company.  
  You will need to change the directories to suit your installation. 

  Basically you are making a directory to store two files, copying
  the files to that directory and then running two commands to install
  the .dll and .reg files into Windows.  You may just want to do this without       using a batch file.  It only has to be done once. 


2) Open Inventor.  Open the .idw file.

- Go to the top most entry in the browser, highlight it,
  right click on it and select Properties.

- Go to the Custom tab and use the Add button to
  add three properties:

Name          Value                Type
--------------------------------------------
SysDate       [leave blank]        Date
SysTime       [leave blank]        Text
TimeStamp     [leave blank]        Text


- Hit okay.

- Go to the Title block (either the standard one that comes
  within Inventor or one that you've customized. 

- go to Sketch and select the Property Field icon.  
  Under Type select Custom Properties - Drawing select TimeStamp.

- Place it where you want it on the drawing.

- Save. 




Included files:

Install_TimeStamp.bat - uses Timestamp.dll and Timestamp.reg to load and
register the app.
TimeStamp.dll
TimeStamp.reg 
TimeStamp_package.zip -- contains source and other necessary files for
editing.


Steve Krause
sk@dolby.com



