Extension development consists of creating the scripted extension. During development, enabling debug mode is recommended.
Once you finish developing and debugging a scripted extension, you can use the binary extension builder to compile into a binary extension for sharing with others. You cannot view or edit the contents of a binary extension.
Extensions cannot be executed until you use the Extension Manager to install and load them. For information on installing and loading both scripted extensions and binary extensions, see Installing and Uninstalling Extensions and Loading and Unloading Extensions.
The following topics provide extension creation information:
Note:
An ACT license is required to create scripted extensions and build binary extensions. However, an ACT license is not required to execute binary extensions. For more information, see Licensing.
ACT can manage an entire set of extensions for different ANSY products. When an extension targets multiple products, it loads the features applicable to the running product. If the end user engages another target product, only customizations specific to that product are available.
Once you save a project in which one or more extensions is loaded, any further use of the project requires the same extensions to be available. If the extensions are found, Workbench loads them automatically when the project is opened. If the extensions are not found, an error message displays. For more information about controlling the available of extensions, see Extension Configuration.
When importing a project into an active Workbench session, ACT merges attribute data from saved extensions. However, the project import operation will fail if same-named attributes exist in identical extensions from both the incoming and active projects. Workbench will report the collision error, abandon the import, and restore the original active project.