customising .txt reports in teststand

[Sreedhar_T]

A small question again, can I send the report that is generated to get printed directly? or atleast

[Sreedhar_T]

A small question again, can I send the report that is generated to get printed directly? or atleast send

[Sreedhar_T]

sorry, there seems to be some problem!!! with the KB

[Dennis_Knutson]

Yes, there are several ini files in the language folder. The biggest and probably most important is TesStandStrings.ini. If you actually look in there, you will see the majority of the text that shows up in the sequence editor. These language files is how TestStand can be easily switched to support different languages. English and Japanese versions ship but you can create your own for any language you want. When TestStand starts, it loads all of the text values in the files. These are the ResStr values that you might have seen in some of the expressions. You can replace any of the existing strings with strings of your own in a custom ini file. Chapter 8 of the TestStand Referance Manual has a section called Creating String Resource Files that you should read. There are many uses for custom string files - not just reports.

A dialog box can be the Message Popup step. This is a step type that ships with TestStand and you should be familiar with it. I assume that you are using some programming language to create test steps. You should know how to write a dialog box in that language. It's such a common task that most languages make it simple to create. How you interface that piece of code to TestStand depends on what language you're using but it won't be any different than what I would presume you already know how to do.

Yes, you can have TestStand print a report automatically. We don't print reports (I think it's a waster of paper) but there is an old example at http://sine.ni.com/apps/we/niepd_web_display.display_epd4?p_guid=B45EACE3D93F56A4E034080020E74861&p_....

You might want to check all of the TestStand topics at http://zone.ni.com/devzone/devzone.nsf/webcategories/16B708D73E72D36286256793006F5400. It's filled with a lot of examples and app notes that should help. You might also consider a training course in TestStand to help you get up to speed.

[Sreedhar_T]

Hi,

It took me sometime to go throughly with what you have told, so it took sometime for me...

I understood many things that you told me in your previous reply. But the only thing I didn't understand is can I change the look/format of the text report that is generated.

For eg, the numeric limit test (very simple and basic one) that I am doing looks like this in the report:

Numeric Limit Test: Passed

Measurement: 30.96

Limits:

Low: 10

Comparison Type: GT (>)

Module Time: 0.0114952

I want it to be something like:

Numeric Limit Test: Passed

Step     Measurement           Limits(low)                Comparison Type           Module Time

 1            30.96                             10                                 GT(>)                              0.0114952

(I have made this manually.........)

For this which .seq file should I seak for or which .ini file has to be changed.... This will put all my problems down.

Thanks a lot for your help till now.

Regards

Sreedhar.

[Dennis_Knutson]

Look in ModelStrings.ini for the existing header strings. You will be creating your own ini file though and you should copy the categories and tags into your custom ini file. The sequence file remains the same -  reportgen_txt.seq. The sequence that puts the test results into the report is PutOneResultInReport. I don't have TestStand 3.1 active right now because I'm doing work on a 2.0 file but in the 2.0 file, the test details are created by a call to a function in modelsupport2.dll. If it's the same in 3.1, you'll want to replace the call to the dll with your own steps. It will be similar to the existing steps except you won't be putting a new line character after each line. You'll be using a tab.

[Sreedhar_T]

Hi,

""""Look in ModelStrings.ini for the existing header strings. You will be creating your own ini file though and you should copy the categories and tags into your custom ini file""""

I didn't create any <custom.ini> but copied the ModelStrings.ini to ......User\Model\TestStandModels and tried to modify that. Is that ok? Previously I did some changes in the same file for the header for eg: I replaced the "UUT Report" with "User Report" and it works pretty well. Now I feel there is not much to change, because I can change only the names there not the structure of the report... to be precise I also have the same problem like the one shown in the link below.

http://forums.ni.com/ni/board/message?board.id=330&message.id=5347&requireLogin=False

""""reportgen_txt.seq. The sequence that puts the test results into the report is PutOneResultInReport""""

I followed this, got into the "PutOneResultInReport.seq", tried to insert some break points, but the execution is not stopping at those break points (either that seq is not being executed or those conditions are skipping), so making changes in the "PutOneResultInReport" is not helping me.

The third thing are modelsupport.dll and modelsupport2.dll the same?

Message Edited by TSreedhar on 02-20-2006 04:32 AM

[Dennis_Knutson]

If you want to have a file of the same name in a different location, that's up to you. Personally, I would find it confusing. Also, you have to understand how TestStand handles all of these ini files. When TestStand starts, it first reads all of the files in the NI folder. It then reads in all of the files in the User folder. When it finds a duplicate in a User file, it uses that value instead of what was in the NI file. If you have a large file in which you've changed only a couple of items, you just making the startup of TestStand a little bit slower.

Yes, either TestStand is not calling that sequence or something is getting skipped. What are your report options? At the bottom is a selection for the report body. If you have DLL selected, it will not use PutOneResultInReport.seq.

I don't have a file called modelsupport.dll. I can only find modelsupport2.dll but in any case, usually files with different names are different in some way.

[RayFarmer]

Hi,

Modelsupport.dll was part of TestStand ver 1.0x.

Regards

Ray Farmer

[Sreedhar_T]

Yeah, as expected, that particular seq was not getting executed. Instead of that, the "Get Step Result Body (DLL)" was getting executed. I simply asked the process model to skip that step and now I am getting inside "Get Step Result Body (Sequence)" . This was quite an excitement. Thanks for the same!!!

But after execution of the sequence, the output still remains almost the same: I want to have the transpose of what I am getting... I tried writing a labview program to transpose, but couldn't know how and where exactly to link it.

So, still primitive!!!

I want to know, what do the "Add Flagged Values" DLL (inside PutOneResultInReport.seq) does. I personally guess, it simply adds the 2-d array with the values. So I tried to incorporate the labview program in there, are my predictions correct???

As far as ModelSupport.dll is concerned, I found that my NI folder has ModelSupport2.dll and in user folder there is this ModelSupport.dll, I replaced it and its still working fine.

By the way, thanks Dennis for telling the importance of .ini files, it is really interesting to know the architecture and the way TS works.

Regards,