RAPID Tips&Tricks: Build a simple menu system based on "TPReadFK"

sepefra1

In our latest project we created a demo application on the YuMi robot, this particular demo was comprised of many different small things we needed the robot to do, like: Open/Close gripper, move to different positions, actuating external axes, resetting system, executing sequences of motion, etc. We decided early on that doing all these tasks in MANUAL mode using program pointer manipulation is too cumbersome. There has to be a better way.. We found one We created a menu using the TPReadFK command in RAPID (this command puts 5 optional buttons on the teachpendant), and by coding this command into a rapid function we were able to build up a menu system recursively with sub-menus, sub-sub-menus, and so on.. Basically, we ended up with writing one line of code for each thing we wanted the robot to do, and by putting the robot in AUTO mode - all these operations became available within ONE SINGLE TOUCH on the flexpendant!!! Please find the attached "Menuselector.sys" module (which includes the menu function).. Add this module to your task and look at the example menu in the main module of the attachment here to create your own menu..