question

Hello,

with some further help I was finally able to make this solution into a working DLL with a relative path to the bat file. I made some changes to the code @phil.bobo suggested.

This is the modified code I used to create the DLL with the DLL Maker:

// C LIBRARY FOR INPUT/OUTPUT STREAMS
#include <stdio.h>
// IN ORDER TO HAVE ACCESS TO FLEXSIM FUNCTIONS, INCLUDE FLEXSIMDEFS.H
#include "FlexsimDefs.h"
#include <shellapi.h>
 
visible double dllcommand1(FLEXSIMINTERFACE)
{	
	SHELLEXECUTEINFO sei = { 0 };
	sei.cbSize = sizeof(SHELLEXECUTEINFO);
	sei.fMask = SEE_MASK_NOCLOSEPROCESS;
	sei.hwnd = NULL;
	sei.lpVerb = "open";
	sei.lpFile = "Run_Forecast.bat";
	sei.lpParameters = NULL;
	sei.lpDirectory = apchar(modeldir());
	sei.nShow = SW_SHOW;
	sei.hInstApp = NULL;
	ShellExecuteEx(&sei);
	WaitForSingleObject(sei.hProcess, INFINITE);
	CloseHandle(sei.hProcess);
 
	return 0;
}

I attached a test model with the working DLL, bat file and cpp file.

dll-works.zip

Thanks for your help! :)

Martin

***This issue has been resolved, see my later comment***

Hello phil,

first of all thank you very much for providing such a detailed solution. I have created a DLL with the DLL Maker and implemented the code you provided. The DLL builds and can be attached to a user command in Flexsim. However, when the user command is executed cmd opens, but the batch file is not executed. When I close the cmd manually the command returns and executes the rest of the script. So in principal it works, just that the batch file is not executed.

Changing the code like this seems to resolve the issue:

#include <stdio.h>
#include "FlexsimDefs.h"
#include <shellapi.h>
 
visible double dllcommand1(FLEXSIMINTERFACE)
{	
	SHELLEXECUTEINFO sei = { 0 };
	sei.cbSize = sizeof(SHELLEXECUTEINFO);
	sei.fMask = SEE_MASK_NOCLOSEPROCESS;
	sei.hwnd = NULL;
	sei.lpVerb = "open";
	sei.lpFile = "C:/Users/Martin/Documents/FlexSim 2018 Projects/Run_Forecast.bat";
	sei.lpParameters = NULL;
	sei.lpDirectory = NULL;
	sei.nShow = SW_SHOW;
	sei.hInstApp = NULL;
	ShellExecuteEx(&sei);
	WaitForSingleObject(sei.hProcess, INFINITE);
	CloseHandle(sei.hProcess);
 
	return 0;
}<br>

This this command will execute the batch file and will wait to return until it has finished. The only caveat here is that I have to use the absolute filepath. I have tried to use the relative path similar to the first solution. The issue is that modeldir() returns the directory with backslashes.

I have tried this crude approach to fix this in the DLL:

But this does not build. How can I get this relative path to work?

P.S. I added two test models that I used.

Model 1 (Original) uses a DLL with your original solution. When I try to run the user command that attaches to the DLL only the cmd opens.

Model 2 (Modified) uses my altered solution that works, but has the filepath for the bat-file hardcoded in the DLL. It would therefore only work on my machine. I included the altered mydll.cpp template that I used to create the DLL.

dll-test.zip