Noob question about Automation Blocks extension

[adisababbba]

Hi. I'm just starting out with the Automation Blocks extension. 

I watched tutorials and on the Mamoworld website, and I'm ready to give it a try.

Just out of curiousity, I decided to start out with the most basic script possible to write "Hello World" in the Console.

From "User Interface & Comments" I dragged the "Write to console..." block to the script panel.

In the block I changed the default text from "my message" to "Hello World"

I hit "Save" and then hit "Run Script"

I checked the Console, but it only says "execute script". It doesn't say "Hello World" as I expected.

What am I doing wrong?

[Mathias Moehl]

Your console should look somewhat like this:

You see that it contains your "Hello World", but also some other messages.

When running a script, Automation Blocks always prints some default messages showing the execution status.

In particular it will show the following messages:

- "execute script" right before the script execution

- "execution result" when execution of the script is finished (this message will show the value of the last executed block. It is "undefined" for the write to console block and many others

-  "destructor final endpoint reached" indicates that the script is really completely done. This is only relevant in cases,  where a script uses the "After Media Encoder is Done Rendering" block. If the "execution result" message shows up, but the "final end point reached" does not show up, it means that the main code of the script is finished, but the script is still waiting for the render queue to finish and once that is the case, it will continue execution.

[adisababbba]

Hi Mathias, thanks!

I just tried it again and it worked. I'm not sure why it wouldn't work before.

I have another question -

When the Consule outputs an error message with a line number indicating where the error is, how do I know what the line number is referencing in the blocks?

[Mathias Moehl]

The line number is not helpful in that case. But when Automation Blocks executes a block, it is always highlighted (you can see that as a fast flickering while the code is executed). So when the process stops with an error, you always know that the highlighted block is the one which was executed last and caused the issue.

You might need to zoom out to see all blocks (and uncollapse collapsed parts) since the highlight disappears again when you pan in the panel.