Global properties

Chapter 2 Accessing Objects Using Scripts

Global properties

The available global properties can be gathered as follows:

Type	Global property	Use
Global accessor	ActiveModel As BaseObject ActivePackage As BaseObject ActiveDiagram As BaseObject	Retrieves the model, package, or diagram that corresponds to the active view
	ActiveSelection As ObjectSet	Read-only collection that retrieves the list of selected objects in the active diagram
	ActiveWorkspace As BaseObject	Retrieves the Application active Workspace
	MetaModel As BaseObject	Retrieves the Application MetaModel
	Models As ObjectSet	Read-only collection that lists opened models
	RepositoryConnection As BaseObject	Retrieves the current repository connection, which is the object that manages the connection to the repository server and then provides access to documents and objects stored under the repository
Execution mode	ValidationMode As Boolean	Enables or disables the validation mode (True/False).
	InteractiveMode As long	Manages the user interaction by displaying dialog boxes or not using the following constants (im_+Batch, +Dialog or +Abort).
Application	UserName As String	Retrieves the user login name
	Viewer As Boolean	Returns True if the running application is a Viewer version that has limited features
	Version As String	Returns the PowerDesigner version
OLE specific	ShowMode As	Checks or changes the visibility status of the main application window in the following way: It returns True if the application main window is visible and not minimized False otherwise
	Locked As Boolean	Can be set to True to ensure that the application continues to run after an OLE client disconnects otherwise the application closes

Example:

'Create a new table in a model
'Get the active model in MyModel variable
Set MyModel = ActiveModel

You can use two types of execution mode when running a script in the editor. A default value can be specified for each mode:

Validation mode
Interactive mode

Validation mode

The validation mode is enabled by default (set to True), but you may choose to temporarily disable it by setting it to False.

State	Constant	Code	Use
Enabled (default value)	True	ValidationMode = True	Each time you act over a PowerDesigner object, all internal PowerDesigner methods are invoked to check the validity of your actions. In case of a forbidden action, an error occurs. This mode is very useful for debugging but is necessarily performance consuming
Disabled	False	ValidationMode = False	You use it for performance reasons or because your algorithm temporarily requires an invalid state. However, be aware, that no validation rules such as name uniqueness or link object with missing extremities are applied to your model in this case

Example:

ValidationMode = true

Interactive mode

The interactive mode is Batch by default.

The interactive mode supports the following constants:

Constant	Code	Description
im_Batch	InteractiveMode = im_Batch	Never displays dialog boxes and always uses default values. You use it for Automation scripts that require no user interaction
im_Dialog	InteractiveMode = im_Dialog	Displays information and confirmation dialog boxes that require user interaction for the script to keep running
im_Abort	InteractiveMode = im_Abort	Never displays dialog boxes and aborts the script instead of using default values each time a dialog is encountered

Option Explicit statement

We recommend to use the Option Explicit statement to declare your variables in order to avoid confusion in code as this option is disabled by default in VBScript. You have to declare a variable before using this option.

Example:

Option Explicit
ValidationMode = True
InteractiveMode = im_Batch
' get the current active model
Dim mdl ' the current model
Set mdl = ActiveModel