GetTickCount

Tonight I was trying to debug some slow SCL code, and wanted to pinpoint exactly which routines were taking the longest to execute. QUEST has a systime() routine that returns the number of seconds since midnight. However, I wanted more accuracy, so I needed to use the GetTickCount routine provided by the Windows API.

I can call this routine using C_EXEC in SCL, and the final routine comes out like this:

routine get_tick_count() : Integer

Const

THE_DLL 'kernel32.dll'

THE_CMD 'GetTickCount'

Var

func_return : Integer

Begin

func_return = c_exec( THE_DLL + ":" + THE_CMD )

return func_return

End

Now, I can get a bit more visibility into what's taking my logics so long to run (though be sure to disable any calls to this routine once you're ready to just run the model)

Select a Part

The other day I was working on a project where I wanted some stats on a part in a model that don't show up in the Trace Entity window. So, I went to write a macro that would let me select a part and show the information I needed. I then realized that I didn't have a routine available that would let me easily select a part, so I went about writing one. Now, it's available for download here, because it was a pain to write and now you don't have to write it too.