(Moved) PiWeb Monitor window closes automatically for manually aligned Plans, stays open otherwise

[[Ke...]]

(Originally erroneously posted in the wrong forum; I saw 'PiWeb' in the path and got too excited...)

Hello all. First time posting here so please be gentle.

This is a quality-of-life issue more than anything critical, but it is irritating.

We are running Calypso 2024 SP2, having upgraded from verion 5.xx.

We have a single Autorun Desk containing multiple Measurement Plans. Under version 5.xx we used the legacy Custom template to save results as individual PDFs, but since the upgrade all Measurement Plans have been updated to use PiWeb Multiple Reports with a custom template that is visually similar to the old one. Because we have no need for any of the deep analysis stuff that PiWeb offers (we are basically doing GO/NOGO acceptance checks on individual, non-batched, parts) the results are still saved as single PDFs.

Most of the Measurement Plans use imported Base or Start Alignments, and these behave exactly as the old system did. At the end of a run the results appear in a PiWeb Monitor window which stays on screen while a PDF copy is saved to the relevant folder. If the job has met the specification we move onto the next one, and if it's failed we can hit the Print button in the PiWeb Monitor window to generate a hard copy. 

But some of the Measurement Plans use Manual Start Alignment. These also save the PDF to the expected location, but when the Multiple Report action has finished the PiWeb Monitor window closes. This is annoying because not only does the operator need to keep an eye on the briefly visible window to see the results, if the job has failed specification (red square on the Desk icon) they must then navigate to the results folder to fetch the most recent PDF before they can print it. It's only a few mouse-clicks, but at up to dozens of times per hour it soon adds up.

I have trawled through every option I can think of in the hope of addressing this, but I can't find anything relevant.

The only workaround I have found is to check the Always leave the CAD window open option on the Tools menu. Whether by accident or design this leaves both the CAD and the PiWeb window open at the end of a run, even for Manual Alignment jobs. If this is by design, I can't imagine why.

Is there something obvious I've missed? Is this a bug or a feature? Is there any other workaround that doesn't involve leaving the CAD window open?

Thanks.

[[Ma...]]

Strangely on one of our CMM's when a program finishes and the PiWeb report comes on the screen for a second then it will disappear like you are seeing. It will not show in the taskbar either. If I minimize the Autorun or Calypso window it will be behind there and also show up in the taskbar. Weird.

Not sure if this is the same thing happening to you.

It does not happen all the time just occasionally so I don't really know if it is program specific.

[[Ke...]]

At least I'm not the only one seeing strange behaviour, so that's something. Have you tried enabling Always lave the CAD window open on the Tools menu of the relevant Autorun window? I'm curious if anyone can reproduce this, assuming we're even seeing the same thing.

That this functions as a viable workaround seems more like a fluke than a feature, but it's easy enough to toggle even on a restricted Autorun Desk so it's trivial for me to add instructions for any operators who might be as irritiated by it as I am.

If it is a feature, I'm struggling to understand why you'd want manually aligned Plans to close their PiWeb window, but those with pre-stored alignments to leave them visible. There's no logic to it that I can see. But then I'd been using the legacy Custom Templates for everything until recently, so PiWeb is still sometihng of a black art. Maybe there's a good reason for it that eludes me.

[[Ma...]]

It can be a bug - normally option "Always leave the CAD window open" should apply only on CAD windows - PiWeb should be separate. And it should be opened only one and stay opened - until you are working in another window ( example Chrome ) - then it should show up and then hide/reshow Chrome.

[[Ke...]]

Thanks for the feedback, folks. Every hint pushes me in a slightly new direction.

I've had another play this afternoon and there are three things of note:

• With the Always leave the CAD window open option disabled, if I manually close the CAD window once the Plan is running but before PiWeb appears, everything behaves as it did in version 5.xx. The PiWeb Monitor windows stays on screen and the PDF gets written. So clearly whatever is happening is happening when Calypso closes that CAD window (which of course doesn't appear on non-manually-aligned Plans and so isn't a factor).
   
• If I have another program window available e.g. an instance of Notepad, and I click on that program to give it focus after the PiWeb window appears but before the PDF has been saved, the PiWeb window stays intact (albeit behind the Notepad window) even when the CAD window gets closed.
   
• This one may be key: it turns out that the PiWeb window is not getting closed along with the CAD window, rather it gets pushed to the background but doesn't get a Taskbar button so there's nothing to tell the operator it's there. I hadn't noticed this before because as soon as I run another Measurement Plan the PiWeb window closes anyway. But when PiWeb "closes" along with the CAD window, if I Alt-Tab I can see that it's still there at the end of the task list. And if I release Alt-Tab on the hidden window to give it focus, it comes to the foreground and gets a Taskbar button that it didn't have before. 

All very odd. It's still midly irritating and it still feels like a bug (especially the Taskbar button thing), but now there's more to work with and I'm wondering if it has as much to do with the host PC having gone from Windows 7 to Windows 10 -- which handles the Taskbar in a very different way -- as it does with Calypso having gone from version 5 to version 7.8.

All part of the joy of learning... 😁

[[Ma...]]

Now i can tell, that on Win7 and Calypso 6.6 it's sometimes behaving that PiWeb protocol is hidden and no taskbar icon. I can not replicate that so i don't know why this happens, but as i shout for a few years - i need second pc for work while machine is measuring. I wouldn't run SolidWorks or even Excel and work there while machine is measuring. Once it's producing protocols and evaluations i am putting my hand down.