Ilogic - Excel problem

[gildas.picaronny]

I work with Inventor 2011 and Excel 2000.

My goal is to parameterize a unit so that all is updated automatically.

Before, I used Excel because it is the only manner that I know to update the parameters in all the parts of the model.

1st question : Does there exist another manner, is there possible to define a parameter starting from a unit and that this one refers in the parts children?

I finally used the ipart in addition to the Excel sheet but I find that there are problems of updates and that it misses functions. Now that ilogic appears, I decided to use it.

2nd question : Which is the interest of ipart now which exists ilogic?

I would like to be able to enter the sheet of parameter the name of the standard model which I want to generate (ex DHA) so that I do not have in the future any more but to replace DHA by DHB so that all is updated.

As I said it previously I cannot do differently than to pass by Excel, therefore I create a sheet with in first column “Model_name” and in the second “DHA”. Problem, Inventor wants units absolutely and does not recognize the text. I then put DHA between quotation mark and I put Texte like unit in the third column. That does not work better. By attaching the sheet, I receive the following error message: “Impossible to modify the value of dimension” and the parameter does not appear in the dialogue box.

I then try to use the function GoExcel.CellValue (“3rd Party: Embedding 1”, “Sheet1”, “B1”), I take care to replace 3rd Party per Third and Sheet1 by Feuil1 (I am on French version) and to attach the sheet renommed in Embedding 1.xls with parameter DHA to another place of the sheet (in F11) so that it does not pose a problem of importation.

I enter the order

iProperties.Value (“Project”, “Number Revision”) = GoExcel.CellValue (“Third: Embedding 1”, “Feuil1”, “F11”)

in Ilogic before receiving the following error message:

“The format of the access path given is not dealt with.” ("Le format du chemin d'accès donné n'est pas pris en charge.")

I do not know any more what to do, I test with the function

iProperties.Value (“Project”, “Number Revision”) = GoExcel.CellValue (“E: /Embedding 1.xls”, “Feuil1”, “F11”)

and I receive:

"Attempt of reading or writing of protected memory. That often states that another memory is damaged." ("Tentative de lecture ou d'écriture de mémoire protégée. Cela indique souvent qu'une autre mémoire est endommagée.")

Could you help me ?

Regards

[swordmaster]

Hello,

Reading through your mail , I believe i understand what you are looking for. "You want to change out the current row of a iassembly or ipart that you have assembled in a inventor assembly using a excel spreadsheet"

can you confirm thats what you are trying to do

[gildas.picaronny]

Hello swordmaster,

Thanks for your answer.

In truth, I would like to change the parts created by ipartthat I find very heavy to generate and limited, in ilogic. Moreover I never used them except for the unit on which I work. Especially, I would like all to parameterize starting from Inventor and to avoid Excel but I wonder whether it is possible

I want that all rebuild automatically, to leave from the mother's assembly model.

The order GoExcel.CellValue( ) don't work when the Excel spreadsheet is integrated but i succeded otherwise.

I've installed Excel 2003 Now.

[MjDeck]

 Unlike an iPart factory, a part with iLogic rules doesn't generate separate member parts.  iLogic will modify the part that contains the rules.  So it is not easy to use iLogic to generate a standard model.

iLogic requires Excel 2003 or a later version.  Excel 2000 won't work.  So it's a good thing that you updated your Excel version.

You should use syntax like:

iProperties.Value (“Project”, “Number Revision”) = GoExcel.CellValue (“3rd Party: Embedding 1”, “Feuil1”, “F11”)

You must use the string "3rd Party".  Using "Third" will not work.

 In order for iLogic to find it, you must embed the spreadsheet using the Link button in the Parameters dialog.  You can change the Start Cell when you are doing the embedding.  You may have data at the top of the sheet which is not in the format that Inventor wants for parameters (name in column A, value in column B, units in column C).  In that case, change the Start Cell to a cell that is below all your data, for instance A99.

[swordmaster]

Mike,

Perhaps you could clarify

I currently use Inventor 2009+Ilogic+excel 2000

What excel versions are required for Inventor 2010+Ilogic and 2011 with Ilogic ?

Is this information documented  in the help files......i could not find it

[MjDeck]

We made an internal change to iLogic in Inventor 2010, and it now requires Excel 2003 or a later version (or actually Excel 2002 (Office XP) , but that is a rare version).    This information might not be in the iLogic help.  It is in the ReadMe file for Inventor 2010.  We should put it in the help.

 On this page 

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/pc/index?siteID=123112&id=13727144

it says:

System Requirements

...

Microsoft® Excel 2003 through 2007 for iComponents, thread customization, and spreadsheet-driven designs

 This was a requirement in Inventor 2010 as well.  When we made that change in iLogic, I thought it was OK because of that requirement.  But since then I have heard from several people who are using Inventor 2010 or 2011 with Excel 2000.

 I hope you can upgrade to Excel 2003.  It would take a bit of work for us to change iLogic back to run with Excel 2000.

[swordmaster]

Mike,

I need to do some testing with ilogic in Inventor 2010, so thanks for the information.

I have the choice of upgrading excel to 2003 or 2007

I have seen posts documenting some issues with later versionsof Inventor (2010,2011) and  excel 2007 I am not sure if these are "real" issues or not.

Do you have a recommendation/ feel for which version of excel to upgrade to?

thanks

[MjDeck]

I use Excel 2007 and I would recommend it.  Can you provide some links to posts that describe issues with it?  If there are some, maybe they are fixed in service packs.  Inventor 2011 had an issue with links to external spreadsheets, for all versions of Excel.  This was fixed by SP1.

[swordmaster]

Thanks Mike, I will upgrade to excel 2007. I do not have any links to specific posts, they may have related to the 2011 issue that you mention.

[SteveX82]

---

@MjDeck wrote:

...

 In order for iLogic to find it, you must embed the spreadsheet using the Link button in the Parameters dialog.  You can change the Start Cell when you are doing the embedding.  You may have data at the top of the sheet which is not in the format that Inventor wants for parameters (name in column A, value in column B, units in column C).  In that case, change the Start Cell to a cell that is below all your data, for instance A99.

---

I've stumbled upon a few problems with embedded spreadsheets and iLogic:

1) The "Start Cell" seemingly has no impact on how iLogic searches the embedded spreadsheet in my model. The first row of my table has various merged columns to organize and describe the column names in the second row. I've set my "Start Cell" to A2, but iLogic stil tries (and fails) to search the first row.

2) Although users are able to rename the embedded spreadsheet name in the browser (an iLogic habit), Inventor fails to recognize the update internally. Any iLogic rules must refer to the original browser name. This is a minor issue, but resulted in ~10minutes of head scratching until I discovered what was going on.

[MjDeck]

The Start Cell only applies to Inventor parameter linking, not to iLogic.  As noted above, to avoid conflicts you should set the Start Cell to point to a cell that is below your iLogic data.
There is a separate iLogic setting to start the search (for GoExcel.FindRow) in a row other than 2.  You can add statements like these at the top of your rule

GoExcel.TitleRow = 2
GoExcel.FindRowStart = 3

The search will always start in column A.

The problem with renaming the embedded spreadsheet is caused by an API limitation.  We should be able to fix it.  I think it is documented in the iLogic help.