How to create an Ansys UI Toolkit GUI box to get input from the user?

Ayush Kumar

How to create an Ansys UI Toolkit GUI box to get input from the user?

Ayush Kumar

Note: Ansys UI Toolkit is not supported.

import clr
clr.AddReference("Ans.Utilities")
clr.AddReference('Ans.UI.Toolkit')
clr.AddReference('Ans.UI.Toolkit.Base')
import Ansys.UI.Toolkit
import Ansys.UI.Toolkit.Base

class Example1Window(Ansys.UI.Toolkit.Window):

    aLabel = None
    aButton = None
    aTextBox = None
    mainPanel = None

    def __init__(self):
        self.Location = Ansys.UI.Toolkit.Drawing.Point(100,100)
        self.Text = 'Example One'
        self.Size = Ansys.UI.Toolkit.Drawing.Size(200,100)
        self.StatusBar.Visible = False
        self.__BuildUI() #this will be defined later
        self.BeforeClose += Ansys.UI.Toolkit.WindowCloseEventDelegate(self.Window_Close)

    def __BuildUI(self):
        self.mainPanel = Ansys.UI.Toolkit.TableLayoutPanel()
        self.Add(self.mainPanel)
        self.mainPanel.Columns.Add(Ansys.UI.Toolkit.TableLayoutSizeType.Percent, 100)
        self.mainPanel.Rows.Add(Ansys.UI.Toolkit.TableLayoutSizeType.Percent, 33)
        self.mainPanel.Rows.Add(Ansys.UI.Toolkit.TableLayoutSizeType.Percent, 34)
        self.mainPanel.Rows.Add(Ansys.UI.Toolkit.TableLayoutSizeType.Percent, 33)
        self.aLabel = Ansys.UI.Toolkit.Label('This is a Label!')
        self.mainPanel.Controls.Add(self.aLabel, 0, 0)
        self.aTextBox = Ansys.UI.Toolkit.TextBox()
        self.aTextBox.Text = 'A Text Box'
        self.mainPanel.Controls.Add(self.aTextBox, 1, 0)
        self.aButton = Ansys.UI.Toolkit.Button('Here is a Button!')
        self.aButton.Click += Ansys.UI.Toolkit.EventDelegate(self.On_Click)
        self.mainPanel.Controls.Add(self.aButton, 2, 0)

    def On_Click(self, sender, args):
        resultString = 'You clicked the button!' + '\n'
        resultString += 'You typed \'' + self.aTextBox.Text + '\'.'
        Ansys.UI.Toolkit.MessageBox.Show(self, resultString, 'Example One', Ansys.UI.Toolkit.MessageBoxType.Info, Ansys.UI.Toolkit.MessageBoxButtons.OK)
        print self.aTextBox.Text
    
    def Window_Close(self, sender, args):
        Ansys.UI.Toolkit.Application.Quit()

class ExampleOne:

    ex1 = None
    def __init__(self):
        self.ex1 = Example1Window()
    
    def Run(self):
        Ansys.UI.Toolkit.Application.Initialize()
        self.ex1.Show()
        Ansys.UI.Toolkit.Application.Run()
        
example = ExampleOne()
example.Run()

Mateusz

Hi Ayush!
Thanks for a great example. So far I've been using System.Windows.Forms instead of Ansys.UI.Toolkit. You mention training and Toolkit documentation, but I can't find either. Could you share where to find it? I found a post that stated, there is no such documentation (https://discuss.ansys.com/discussion/2130/is-there-any-documentation-for-the-ansys-ui-toolkit).

Also, I tried to use ComboBox, but I cannot change its style to DropDown. I get various errors like:
Traceback (most recent call last):
AttributeError: attribute 'DropDownStyle' of 'namespace#' object is read-only

In regular Windows.Forms it works more or less like:
self._comboBox = System.Windows.Forms.ComboBox()
self._comboBox.DropDownStyle = ComboBoxStyle.DropDownList
self._comboBox.Items.Add("a")

Mike.Thompson

I am not 100% sure, but I don’t believe the UI Toolkit is officially supported or documented. That said, I find it quite useful. Windows forms is also quite useful in a similar way.

For an example of more advanced implementation of the UI toolkit you can refer to the bolt tools add on in mechanical. If you enable this, add on and open the script console, you can go to that extension scope, and get the directory for the add-on. In this location you will find numerous files that use this UI toolkit, but specifically WizardControlsV2.py will have lots of helpful tools for building UI that allows for geometry selection, tree, object, selection, drop down options, text, or numeric input, etc.…. For examples of using that module refer to almost any file that ends in GUI.

Ayush Kumar

@Mateusz, sorry for the confusion. As I added in the note on the top of the code, "Ansys.UI.Toolkit" is not officially supported and nor is it documented. I removed the line that caused the confusion.

Please follow the hints provided by @Mike.Thompson for more examples on UI Toolkit but you can use Winforms as well for GUI functionalities.

Mateusz

Thanks @Mike.Thompson and @Ayush Kumar for such a quick response! I should start to use this forum more often

Think I'll stick to Winforms then. But I'll definitely check the Bolt Tool out, as I find it pretty interesting inside the Mechanical!