Trimble Business Center

Since I'm leaving my current position and won't be working until at least next year I won't have use for my macros anymore. And who knows, maybe I'm going to work with the other T or even L equipment in the future.

During the last 2.5 years I've developed quite a bunch of macros. Some of them do quite trivial things which are most likely some of the very first ones. But with time I've got a bit the hang of it, and some might be pretty handy for other users as well. I'm not a professional developer but an engineering surveyor who tried to tweak TBC to his specific needs. Trimble unfortunately doesn't provide a lot of support or documentation regards the macro language. They released some sample macros but that's about it. Those sample macros do cover quite of few aspects, but it still was a lot of trial and fail and scrolling up and down in the assembly object browser. A huge thanks to the few people who post and support on the macros forum and sometimes pointed me into the right direction.

TBC uses internally meters as unit, as did we in Australia. So, initially all the macros were developed just for meters. In the last few weeks I've added support for imperial units as well. I did some simple sanity checks and it looks ok. But do your own checks when you use them the first time.

The macros are provided as they are. I won't have access to a TBC license anymore and can't react to bug reports. If you find a major bug, or Trimble is moving stuff around in the assembly namespace in future versions, I unfortunately won't be able to fix it.

The GitHub page has two ZIP files. One for TBC until V5.81 and one for TBC V5.90 onwards. The page also shows where to unzip them and how the folder structure is supposed to look.

If you have any standalone old versions of my macros then you'll need to delete them first.

You can't put them anywhere else, you'd have to change the hard coded imports file location in each macro. More details on the GitHub page. 

The ZIP files are about 90MB each, which is mainly due to the animated GIF's in the Help folder. The GIF's might have been created with an older version and not show the latest GUI and functionality.

https://github.com/RonnySchneider/SCR_Macros_Public

Merry Christmas

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Ronny Schneider
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I've just popped these in and wow, that's quite a collection. I'm sure I'll make use of a few of these.

Thanks.

Matt

Thank you Ronny,

Echo Matt's comments - there's a lot there to look up and use,

But as a query I'm getting the below error when starting TBC (accepting them doesn't seem to cause any TBC issues - just about 30 "OK's" ) - should I create some dummy files?

After you've added to the Macros folder the next time you run TBC you'll need to run it as administrator.

Hello Matt,

or right click the "C:\ProgramData\Trimble\MacroCommands3" folder and in "Properties" change the security settings of it so that every user has full access.

That is some nonsense that Trimble came up with for TBC V5.90. Supposedly they had requests from a handful of users to protect this folder and now they annoy everybody with it, instead the few people that want it protected do it themselves.

If you install TBC with Admin rights the folder inherits those rights and you'll always need them if you want to change something in it.

The other option is to create the folder "C:\ProgramData\Trimble\MacroCommands3" manually BEFORE you install TBC V5.90. In that case you are the creator/owner of the folder and it will always just require your rights.

Thankyou Dylan & Ronny,

Right clicking and running next TBC as an Administrator worked (luckily our IT trusts me enough to have Administrator rights for my local PC - that's another story!)

But now TBC seems to be very slow starting - any suggestions?

I didn't notice a difference. How much slower is it?

I didn't notice it loading any slower either, although I never really pay much attention, my morning routine is start business centre, start outlook, open worksmanager, disappear to the kitchen for a coffee. It's normally loaded by the time I get back.

Is asking IT for a faster computer out of the question?

This is quite the gift. I hope it starts a trend of Macro developers being more open source with their creations and helping other non-devs develop some skills to create their own macros. I lack any programming skills, but I've always wanted to develop my own custom macros for TBC. With the lack of documentation, I just couldn't figure it out enough to be able to make my own. So, cheers to you being one of the first people to really give some great tools to the community. 

I'm wondering if it's possible we could also use this thread (or a new one, if needed) to share any improved workflows they're finding with these custom tools? Whether it be figuring out how to utilize some of the more obscure ones ("P = P1-XY + P2-Z" is one I don't know what it does), or figuring out what combination of commands help you model something faster. 

I found that the "Line-Info VPI's" command is exactly what I had an idea to make whenever I attempted to create my own Macro. It does two things - either creates CAD points at every VPI on your line or converts over the horizontal elevations to be vertical nodes. I prefer to keep all my elevations as VPI so that I can see everywhere an elevation is entered on a single window and view the slopes between elevations. However, the nature of drafting lines with the linestring command often proves to be faster to get the line elevated if I just type the line in the elevation section of the horizontal tab. Not to mention the issue of bringing over any elevated linework from other software -- using this command easily converts it over to a VPI, and then allows you to create points everywhere an elevation is entered on the line. 

I had an idea for how this command could be even more useful. Does anybody know of any commands that will erase any horizontal elevations that have the same slope between them as the previous elevation? For instance, if I bring over any elevated linework from Agtek or Civil3D, the arcs have a hundred different elevations in them due to being converted into chorded polylines. Between each elevation is the same slope, so theoretically you could find where the slope begins and where it ends, and then delete every elevation setting from all the nodes in-between. This could then be used with the Line-Info VPI command and you'd have an easy way to turn messy elevated linework into editable info for modeling. I think there could be a button added under the "VPI's only, uncheck to include grade changes" option on the "Line-Info VPI's" command that would do this for you. Something like "Include only beginning and ending of slope changes"

@Ronny Schneider Just wanted to take a second to thank you for all your generous contributions to productive conversations and tips and tricks you've given to the worldwide Trimble user base through the various forums you would pop in on.  You clearly know your stuff and have been very kind to share it.  Best of luck in your next endeavors and thank you again for all you did for the community of Trimble users out there. 

~Steve DiBenedetto (the Siteworks Product Owner:) 

Thank you for your contribution Ronny. Excellent addition, wish I knew how to make them.

Ronny,  You are an absolute legend!  I wish you nothing but the best in your new endeavors and rest assured that your new colleagues will be in very good hands.

-Wayne Welshans

ronny. i don t actually run any macros. but i have seen your posts over the years and seen how many people you have helped. you have been extremely generous and trimble would be foolish not to try to hire you. best of luck with your next steps. 

Ronny,

Thanks for doing this. I'm looking forward to checking them out.

I'm sure you didn't post this with the intention of supporting every knuckle-head such as  myself, so this is a question for those that have been able to download these files...

I'm trying to download the v5.90 zip file, but it is only 118kb and is said to be corrupted. Can someone clue me (and maybe some others) on how to download these? I'm not very familiar with GitHub, but I think I've download files from there before.

Ronny for President!!!!!

We will miss you Ronny!

Hi Rony!

I'm in big trouble. Are you trying to help me?
I installed version 2023.10 and since then I can't use your SCR Macro. I get this error:

Any ideas?

Attila

ever macro has the same error "FergusonSpline" 

"FergusonSpline" seems to be the common theme amongst failures 

Hello Attila,

I got me the latest version and a 30 day test licence.

Trimble did move thing around in the namespace again. FergusonSpline is the first import that fails, there are quite a few more afterwards.

That every macro is affected comes from the fact that every macro calls the same imports file. But makes it also easy to fix all of them with just one file.

It is super annoying that Trimble changes the namespaces all the time. The ones at the very end of my imports file got changed the third time now since V5.40.

Use the content of the attached file to overwrite the existing SCR_Imports.py in "C:\ProgramData\Trimble\MacroCommands3\SCR Macros".

And search/delete all existing .dict and .dict2 files in the above mentioned folder before restarting TBC.

That should enable all the macros again. It can still be that they changed some method functionalities, i.e. input formats of variables which will lead to errors upon runtime. I'd need to test every single macro to be 100 % sure.

Attachment(s)

SCR_Imports.zip   2 KB 1 version

Thanks for your quick help Rony!

The projected surface contour works well. This is the most important thing for me now.
If I can help you with anything, contact me.

Attila