The Advanced Toolpath Utility offers commands for compiling and executing the buildstyle project. It also offers a test build command. Each command uses at least parts of the buildstyle’s JavaScript files and it might be interesting for you to know exactly what part of the buildstyle code is affected by which command.
Compiling
If you’re already familiar with JavaScript, it might sound incorrect to “compile” JavaScript code, since JavaScript is an interpreted language. The underlying JavaScript engine of the Advanced Toolpath Utility pre-processes the JavaScript and optimizes the code. In this step, it is also able to find simple syntax errors. So in the end, the JavaScript will be compiled into an optimized JavaScript or rejected because of syntax errors.
Clicking the Compile button pre-processes all JavaScript files of the buildstyle project and it can be used to check the syntax of the JavaScript files. It also refreshes the Exposure Preview and the 3D View windows.
Depending on the activated options of the Exposure Preview window, it already uses script functionality to display the toolpath. In this case, the compile process also executes parts of the buildstyle (such as about, declareMachine, declareBuildAttributes, declareExportFilter, prepareModelExposure, declareParameters...)
Executing
Executing the buildstyle compiles all and executes most of the buildstyle’s JavaScript files.
The following processing steps can be left out:
- Unit Testing
- Preprocessing
- Exposure Data Calculation
- Data Export
Exporting
Creating a test build will finally execute the whole build process.
