VBA No More?

[meck]

Rumor has it that Autodesk will not be including VBA will anymore Inventor releases. Can someone here please verify this for me?

[Anonymous]

Microsoft are phasing out VBA, presumably to be replaced by something based on their .NET .
ACAD no longer has VBA by default but you can download the VBA enabler so it's likely that IV will go the same way. Hopefully Autodesk will have got their act together and when they drop VBA (say in IV 2012) they will have something equivalent in it's place . There again they may not !

[meck]

I really need conformation that VBA is going to be gone. I have hundreds if not thousands of template models that have VBA code in the dimensions. If these are no longer going to work... well I'll have a lot of work ahead of me.
Could a Autodesk person please confirm?

[Anonymous]

Don't hold your breath for a definitive statement from Autodesk as they're not keen on talking about future releases. Although in this case I think they ought to, to enable VBA users to plan ahead and not drop us in it when the version is released where we need to use something other than VBA.
But hey, who are we to moan, we're only the customer.

[Anonymous]

While it is true that Microsoft no longer officially supports VBA and it is
being phased out, there are no immediate plans to drop VBA support for
Inventor. We are evaluating alternatives such as VSTA, but we don't have a
transition plan yet. Having said that, it may not be a bad idea to
familiarize yourself with VB.Net if you haven't already. It is most likely
the environment that will replace VBA in the future. The vb.net express
edition provides a good sandbox for experimenting.

Sanjay-

[meck]

Thanks for the response Sanjay!
I've had some training with VB.net, and in the limited exposure I've had they seem to be extremely similar. Here's hoping they make the transition seamless.

[Anonymous]

Thanks Sanjay.
Looks as if I don't need to worry about learning a 'new' language just before I retire

[Anonymous]

Here is a link to an interesting article about Office 2010 and VBA...
http://visualbasic.about.com/b/2010/03/27/vba-forever.htm?nl=1



"meck" wrote in message news:6392355@discussion.autodesk.com...
> Rumor has it that Autodesk will not be including VBA will anymore Inventor
> releases. Can someone here please verify this for me?

[Anonymous]

Hi Sanjay,

Since this reply was posted (close to a year), is there anything new concerning the future of VBA and/or its alternative in Inventor?

Thanks 

[Anonymous]

I too have been concerned about this topic.

I've been looking into running VB.NET forms and dialogs encapsulated in a dll library and launched from an external iLogic Rule. 

My current problem with that is that you cannot link an external iLogic Rule to a button unless you use VBA.

*Catch - 22*

You can of course doc the Rule browser and run them with a right mouse menu but that is too clumsy for my engineering crew.

Link

http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/Autodesk-Inventor-Customization/Create-Toolbar-buttons-for-external-iL...

[Anonymous]

Sanjay has moved on, maybe Brian will pick up on this.

Of course, he may not be able to comment  😉