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Quick Macros


Description

In this video we will be demonstrating the use of Quick Macros in Tecplot 360.

Quick Macros are a tool to reduce complex or repetitive tasks into a single-click process.

To illustrate this, we will create a Quick Macro to setup our preferred default view for an airplane data set.

We start by recording a simple macro to set up the view. Here we are changing the plot type to 3D Cartesian, and adjusting the view so that the nose of the airplane is facing us.
Once recorded we can go into the tecplot.mcr file, found where Tecplot 360 is installed, and insert the recorded commands. For those who do not have write access to this location, the Tecplot 360 User’s Manual has details for alternate location options.

The recorded macro commands can be inserted into the tecplot.mcr file in two ways.

  1. In the first method, we simply copy and paste the recorded commands into a $!MacroFunction block. The $RedrawAll commands are included from the recording, but are not necessary for the playback of the macro, and can be removed.
  2. The second option is to reference the recorded macro using the $!INCLUDEMACRO command. This can be useful as an alternative to embedding long macro files.

Now, save the tecplot.mcr file and relaunch Tecplot 360.

You can now see the two new commands in the Quick Macro Panel. We’ll reload the data set and double click on one of the commands to easily reset the view of our data.

The next time you are working with your data you can quickly call this Quick Macro with a double click to restore the view that was defined in the macro recorded earlier.

This concludes the tutorial on Quick Macros. Thank you for watching.