This appendix is dedicated to the Component Object Model (COM) feature available in SuperPro and EnviroPro Designer. The COM feature has been available since version 6.0 and is constantly updated to include additional options of the above software packages. The main essence of COM is to enable inter-process communication and dynamic object creation through a variety programming languages. Code has been added in SuperPro & EnviroPro so that the applications behave as an Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) Automation Server. For the rest of this document we use Pro-Designer to refer to either the SuperPro Designer or the EnviroPro Designer applications and similarly we use Pro-Designer COM Server to refer either to the EnviroPro or SuperPro automation server.
Using the Pro-Designer COM Server you can now explore windows interoperability combining several other applications (such as Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Visual Basic, and Visual C#) with Pro-Designer. The Pro-Designer COM Server can thus be used by client applications to perform various tasks including:
● Showing the Pro-Designer application, opening and closing files.
● Solving the Pro-designer simulation case and performing economic calculations.
● Data exchange between the Pro-Designer simulation variables and other applications.
● Exporting of Pro-Designer reports, charts, tables and pictures to specified files or to the clipboard.
This functionality has useful applications in:
● Data transfer between various applications and databases.
● Creation of custom reports fro design, economic evaluation, and environmental assessment purposes.
● Sensitivity analysis studies for Pro-Designer simulation cases.
● Risk analysis studies for Pro-Designer simulation case.
The object exposed by the Pro-Designer server is the The Designer Library. The Designer Type Library is common to SuperPro and EnviroPro Designer Servers. The methods and members of the Designer Type Library, are explained in Pro-Designer COM server Methods and the variables that can be accessed with these methods are listed in Accessing Pro-Designer Variables with COM. Use of these methods to inter-operate with other windows applications (such as MS Excel, MS Word, etc.) requires the use of a common scripting language, for this purpose Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) was chosen to illustrate this, see VBA Sample Scripts for more information. These methods can also be used to inter-operate with other windows programming environments (such as Visual C#). For more information on the latter please, see Visual C# COM Application.
In order to get started using the Pro-Designer OLE Automation Server follow the instructions in Setting Up The Project.
The Pro-Designer COM Server is not intended as a tool for creating a simulation case, but rather as a tool for manipulating the variables of existing process files in order to further analyze and evaluate the process. It can be an indispensable tool for engineering parametric studies of process design or/and economic analysis. An example of such study is illustrated in Sensitivity Analysis Example. Furthermore it allows integration of Pro-Designer with other windows applications such as stochastic risk-analysis tools for performing uncertainty and risk-assessment studies on ambiguous process files as described in Risk Analysis Example.