Where can I find the 13.5 Developer Migration Guide? It's gone in myConfigura wiki 😥

In case if you didn't know yet, we're in the process of removing wiki in myConfigura, and that's where it houses all of the developer migration guides / older QA testing guides for a long while now. The new refreshed site to the developer migration guides are now here : Click Me

Now, on to the testing guide: 

Welcome to the 13.5 QA Testing Guide, please check with your developer to make sure 13.5 Migration is successfully completed before testing.

cm.core.parttag.partTagsInWorld

In this change, certain classes have been changed from globals to getter and setter, part of code refactoring. This was done as part of the performance improvement efforts that the team have put in. To make sure you experience no adverse effect with your manufacturer extension, please follow smoke test instructions of:

1. Using your manufacturer extension, part tag your product snappers through all methods (rectangle, custom shape, selection, etc.). Do check if default part tag categories are still retained if your manufacturer does have any, also not to forget verifying if undo and redo works.
2. Test visibility of part tags through view modes, filter, view clips and print outs.
3. Also, create a new drawing repeat test case 1, 2 above. Switch between different drawings should still retain the application of part tags. Ensure there are no *performance hiccups when doing so.

PropDefs and PropInputSetting attributes

There are some interface changes and code refactorings for code optimisation. Hence, it's important to make sure the properties still work for your manufacturer extension.

1. By using your extension snappers, ensure the features and values are still available, not missing in the process. They should still be applicable (materials, features etc.). *2D and 3D space
2. Ensure quick and animation property box is correctly sized, and can be moved around, docked and hidden.

Price Change Environment

Developers made some code refactorings to the classes in core that relates to the calculation module. With this, it's important to recheck the pricings for your manufacturer snappers. Follow test instructions of:

1. By using your extension snappers, ensure *pricing is correct and accurate and is the same as CET 13.0 in the bill of material (BOM). (Refer to pricing reference in your manufacturer specification if any)
2. Load/Create a larger than usual drawing, invalidate the bill of material dialogue by clicking on 'F5', make sure it still refreshes and does not freeze and cause CET not respond in the process.*(Optional) Check the time taken to invalidate.

Abstract Office

Panel Junctions
With the increase of cases in having inline post junctions (a.k.a. S junction), it has been difficult to implement junctions in customization with how the junction system figuring out what junction to use.

To solve this developers has bring support for using distance as part of the determining factors for which junction is the best when snapping. Developer also made some cleanup and breaking things out into methods when making this work.

To ensure this changes does not affect your panel products, kindly follow the test instruction below:

1. Using your manufacturer extension panel system, connect 2 panels to create an inline junction.
2. Ensure correct panel junction post is generated, in terms of graphics and parts.
3. Also using the panels, try other junction post (Eg. L, T, X, V, Y). Ensure correct panel junction post are generated, also check the graphics and validate parts in BOM.

Typical Blocks (Component Block)
There have been cases where other connected snappers are filtered out as well when using typical blocks, when it should only exclude panel frames and junctions automatically.

To fix this developer created a new prop to use for filtering out the symbols. Also the classes were split out into separate files for ease of navigation when making changes.

Follow the test instructions below:

1. With your manufacturer panel system extension, create a typical workstation. Then select the workstation, right click and select "Create Component Block". Note: you can also create block for the typical workstation, then open the Blocks dialog and select "to Component Block".
2. Ensure no other components than the panel frames and junctions are hidden after converting to component block.
3. You can also try adding more symbols in the typical workstation before converting it to component block. Also ensure that only the panel frames and junctions are being hidden.
   

Panel Frames and Worksurface

The PanelFrameInsertAnimationG2 is rewritten to fix some old issues while trying to emulate the old animations. It is also to make sure that the implementation is more consistent with the old animation while supporting G2 animations. Some changes to other small bugs and old behavior with the PanelFrame were also made as needed.

As for worksurface minor change was done to the material used for remove support animation and also added a new method to perform undo step better.

Left: CET 13.0; Right: CET 13.5

Test instructions:

1. Using Panel product line from your Manufacturer extension, ensure that Animation Properties is working correctly when inserting Panel to drawing. Try changing the options available in Animation Properties.
2. Attach another panel or a worksurface to it. Ensure connection is correct, graphics are generated as expected and parts shown in BOM are correctly generated.
3. Stretch the Panel. Ensure Width, Depth, Height can be stretched with no issues. Also try stretching panel with worksurface attached and make sure the two will stretch together.
4. Use the "Remove a support" animation, verify the color of the removal animation and that removal of worksurface support is working.
5. Perform undo on operations done to worksurface. Verify that all operations can be undo and no odd behavior occurs.

RED Engine Revision

There's a revision to the RED engine in CET 13.5 which is utilized mainly for renderings. With that, we highly recommend checking out these areas using your manufacturer extension.

Follow smoke test instructions in CET 13.5 of:

1. Ensure performance of loading (new/existing) drawings are not slower than before. It should feel the same as CET 13.0, otherwise faster.
2. In your manufacturer extension component tab, try out 'Elevation View' for different layouts of your manufacturer products. Verify in 2D space that the rendering has no anomalies. Going a mile further, verify accuracy by using dimension tools to ensure the measurements of the rendering is correct, in correspondence to the actual product snapper dimensions.
3. Perform a quick render/render in Photo Lab using different presets or custom lighting. Verify that material and color is accurate. It should not look different from the version before.
4. In paperview, create a few papers. As you create, ensure that 2D Viewclip coverage works and clip correctly according the area snipped. On top of that, make sure a 3D viewport also works correctly, both locked and unlocked.

Abstract Material Handling

There's a large migration required for Material Handling abstract. Developers made numerous changes in favor of code refactorings and newer additions to the engine and behavior.

If you come from Material Handling industry, we recommend you to follow this section, otherwise you may skip. Using your 'Material Handling' manufacturer extension, follow test instructions of:

1. Ensure you are able to insert different types of racking / conveyor layouts.
2. Verify that you are able to stretch all racking / conveyor points (Width, Height, Depth).
3. Check if Unit Load editor works for you. (if your manufacturer extension has one)
4. Check that the racking symbols are visible in create PDF, Print Preview. If you have manufacturer automatic papers, check that too.
5. Make sure Elevation view works and is accurate.
6. Check all part numbers are correct and *prices doesn't mismatch.
7. Verify by *loading older drawings still supports and can be worked on.

New features

Scheme Save

In CET 13.5, saving schemes has been revamped, features are as follows:

Different naming suffix when it is saved. It is now saved as <SchemeName>.schemegroupName.extensionName.cmScheme

By looking at the photo below, The Scheme Name is [CET QA Test] under [Fika] extension grouped by [FAM]. By saving this scheme, it will be saved as [CET QA Test.FAM.Fika.cmScheme].

If you choose to 'Save as', folder of [Scheme group.extensionName] will be created upon saving, hence [FAM.Fika] folder seen in photo. If you are wondering, old schemes without the naming suffix will get overwritten and renamed once changes are made.

Exporting and Importing scheme also see changes, where previously exporting schemes will be saved as 'cmSchemes', is now changed to 'cmSchemeZip'.

Auto Embedding schemes are now quicker where you will see a toggle 'Auto-embed all' in the Schemes Explorer menu. Once toggled 'on', making custom schemes and applying to the snappers will automatically embed schemes to the drawing. As long as there's a scheme embedded into the drawing, there will be a 'hook' icon displayed on top right corner of the scheme button in Scheme Explorer menu.

With these changes to scheme dialog, we would like to make sure that schemes also work top notch on your end. Follow test instructions of:

1. Using your manufacturer extension schemes (If available), try applying (Target/Selection/All) different scheme properties/ presets to your manufacturer snappers and ensure it works correctly.
2. Ensure [new/existing] custom schemes can be saved, loaded on your end. Any new saves should follow new naming suffix explained above.
3. Make sure no properties are missing in the scheme dialog when using your manufactuer extension schemes.
4. Ensure embedding schemes to drawing still works.

Denoiser

Ever wondered how to get rid of unwanted noise in your renderings?

Fret not, in CET 13.5, we're introducing a new feature which will solve if not all, but most of the noise that you've always wanted to remove. In Photo Lab > Post processing > Color, you will now see a new checkbox 'Denoise' which will noticeably remove as much visible noise after the photo has been rendered. It is 'ticked' by default. For now, untick then ticking the checkbox is not exactly instant, this performance issue is taken note of and will be improved in the later version of CET.

How does it look like?

Let us look at a photo comparison with '*Denoiser' 'OFF ❌' (Top) and 'ON ✔️' (Bottom)

Notice the lighting area around the 'CET' logo which yields very obvious noise.

To make sure this feature works on your end, please follow test instructions of:

1. Using your manufacturer extension snappers with lighting, make a simple drawing. Fire up 'Photo Lab' and make a few renderings. Assess material accurracy with 'Denoise' option ticked and unticked. Ensure material shine and correctness is still as before and does not look different. 
2. Test 'Denoise' option with your older renderings, it should be compatible. You will need to render them again to support this feature otherwise, checkbox is grayed out.
3. Ensure there are no *marginable performance difference for rendering time, compared to previous version of CET.

Templates

In CET 13.5 we introduced Templates. Now you can create a drawing and saved it as a drawing templates. This will allowed customers to share CET drawing templates especially with their dealerships to implement a company wide drawing standard. You can incorporate desired reusable files (E.g.: article views, paper title blocks, custom categories, visibility settings,etc..) that suites your project into creating the templates.

What templates can do:

1. Allow saving a CET drawing as a template.
2. Choose a saved template while opening a new drawing or from a recent template section.
3. Edit templates and allow to overwrite or save as a new template
4. Share templates.

Sample:

To try out templates, please follow the steps below:

1. On a new drawing in CET, create a floor plan / layout that can be used as a template. Include your manufacturer extension symbols, elevation, legend, papers in it too if possible.
2. Click "File > Save as template ...". Enter a name for it and ensure the template is saved (File type is .cmdrwt).
3. Now go to "Files > Templates", select the saved template and click on "Make default".
4. Close and relaunch CET, ensure that CET is started up with the saved template.

Note: Alternatively you can go to "Control Panel > Templates" to choose the default template.

Extension Startup

This new feature is an extension to the existing delayed extension 'wake-up'. In short, your extension will need to be migrated to support this feature, where it snoozes the extension startup until it is clicked on. This contributes to quicker CET startups.

With this feature in place, you now have the flexibility to choose which extensions can be forced 'wake- up', or snoozed on your CET startup, basically staggering extensions to load and 'wake-up' to achieve faster CET startups.

In Control Panel, you should see a new section 'Extension Startup'. 

1. Section A - You can tick extensions, in which they will be forced to 'wake-up' on the next CET startup. Unticked extensions will be snoozed on the next startup, will only start when it is clicked on.
2. Section B - Last Used refers to the most recent last snapper placed in the drawing. For example, if you last placed a snapper from FIKA office, FIKA office should be updated as most recent 'Last Used'.
3. Section C - When enabled, core extensions will also be shown in the list. They cannot be unticked / snoozed as it will be grayed out disabled.
4. Section D - Displays the total estimated startup, updates depending on the number of extensions ticked / unticked.

In CET 13.5, the component tabs will look different than before. The grayed out extension icons (Red arrows in photo) are the ones that are snoozed. It also has an estimated startup time for that extension alone if it were to clicked on, to 'wake-up'.

With this, we would like to ensure that it does no adverse effect to the startup and experience using CET after you've updated to 13.5. Please make sure:

1. By using your manufacturer extension, you could tick/untick in the Extension startup dialogue. Make sure with both options, it can 'wake-up' and be worked on.
2. Startup of CET and your extension should not be *slower than before.

Performance Testing

Performance is a very important aspect that drives CET's usability experience. As we strive to provide more enhancements and new features in the later CET versions, performance is taken into strict consideration to ensure its consistency and does not introduce an unintended ripple effect throughout. With that said, we would like our manufacturers to run some basic performance tests, to make sure they are not affected.

Basic checklists

1. To ensure the best performance possible, please switch off unused extensions, which will contribute to faster CET loading and startup.
2. Test for possible memory leak issue using Window's Task Manager (Open using shortcut CTRL + SHIFT + ESC). Look for 'CETDesigner.exe' under 'Processes' tab and make sure overall memory consumption is not maxed out, with CET eating up most of it. Check that CET's memory consumption makes negligible difference between old and new, report if you experience abnormally high memory consumption by 'CETDesigner.exe'.

New Tool in Release Debug

Measure Globals

A new tool to inspect memory allocation for packages installed in CET. This tool can be used to determine memory leak of certain packages if memory is growing overtime and not being release.

What you can do:

1. To be used whenever there is a memory spike or memory maxing out in Windows Task Manager. Or unusual sluggishness or slowdown were felt while using CET.
2. Open up Release Debug menu using Ctrl+Alt+Shift+F12. Click on "Measure Globals". Some users might have clashes with Intel HD Graphics shortcut.
3. The traces will be written to CET log file. Send the log file together with relevant information to devsupport@configura.com for investigation.

Response Monitor tests

We highly recommend using 'Response Monitor' under 'QA Tools' to trace the time taken for different actions done in CET. Compare the time taken for the same actions done between the old and new versions of CET. If time taken difference is of a huge margin, you may report to 'devsupport@configura.com' for assistance.

By using your manufacturer extension, we suggest checking time differences for these actions:

• System startup time
• First snapper placement, and subsequent continuous placement
• Stretching (check if its smooth and not jerky)
• Copy and Paste
• Creating Alternatives
• Save and Load drawing
• Material application in [Animation, Quick Properties, Customer Own Material, Scheme Dialog]

That's all we have for you! 

The QA Support team would like to wish you all the best in your 13.5 Migration journey. 👍

Have additional questions?