C.10.1. Tutorial: Adding a Link

This tutorial covers the steps needed to add a custom link to the Links group. The Links group is available in any of the standard wizards.

View the completed TaskML file for this tutorial.

Steps

To add a link to the web site MatWeb:

Open the TaskML file MechanicalWizard\Tasks\Links.xml in a text editor such as Notepad. All standard wizards Merge the Links.xml file; changes made to this file automatically appear in all standard wizards.

Create a new task definition by adding the following to the tasks section:

<tasks>    
    <task id="DesignSpaceHomePage" icon="simwiz://Icons/Link.gif"> 
        <activate-event>
            <open-url href="http://www.designspace.com" />
        </activate-event>
    </task>
    <task id="DesignSpaceResources" icon="simwiz://Icons/Link.gif">
        <activate-event>
            <open-url href="http://www.designspace.com/designspace/user_support/" />
        </activate-event>
    </task>    
    <task id="MatWeb" icon="simwiz://Icons/Link.gif">
        <activate-event>
            <open-url href="http://www.matweb.com/" />
        </activate-event>
    </task>
</tasks>

The value for the id attribute is arbitrary.

Define a new string by adding the following to the strings section:

<strings>
    <language xml:lang="en-us">
        <string id="Standard_Links_Caption">
            Links
        </string>
        <string id="DesignSpaceHomePage_Caption">
            DesignSpace.com
        </string>
        <string id="DesignSpaceResources_Caption">
            DesignSpace Resources
        </string>
        <string id="MatWeb_Caption">
            MatWeb Materials
        </string>
    </language>
</strings>

The value for the string id uses the built-in naming convention of the task id and "_Caption" to simplify the task element by omitting the caption attribute. The new string applies to the default language code "en-us." To support other languages, define a new string inside each language section.

Insert the new task into the Links group by modifying the body section as follows:

<body>
    <group id="Standard_Links" collapsed="yes">
        <taskref task="DesignSpaceHomePage" />
        <taskref task="DesignSpaceResources" />
        <taskref task="MatWeb" />
    </group>
</body>

The task attribute matches the id of the task.

Save the file.

Open a wizard in the Mechanical application. The Links group will contain a new link to the MatWeb website.