Hi Tommy!
I’ll explain how I managed to use a dll library in Inventor iLogic.
In order to create the dll itself I used Visual Studio Express.
I created a Class Library project called MySampleLibrary.
My class inside this project is something like this:
Imports Inventor
Imports System.Runtime.InteropServices
Imports System.Windows.Forms
Public Class SampleClass
' I create this variable in order to get access to the Inventor application from within the class
Public _invApp As Inventor.Application
''' <summary>
''' This is a standard function that grants access to the Inventor application
''' </summary>
''' <returns>Returns true if successful</returns>
''' <remarks></remarks>
Private Function InitInventorApp() As Boolean
Try
_invApp = Marshal.GetActiveObject("Inventor.Application")
InitInventorApp = True
Catch ex As Exception
InitInventorApp = False
End Try
End Function
Public Sub MySampleSub()
If InitInventorApp() Then
If _invApp.Documents.Count > 0 Then
MessageBox.Show(_invApp.ActiveDocument.DisplayName, "SampleClass.MySampleSub", MessageBoxButtons.OK)
End If
' Do some cooler stuff here
Else
MessageBox.Show("Unexpected error occured!", "External dll error", MessageBoxButtons.OK, MessageBoxIcon.Error)
End If
End Sub
End Class
Than in Inventor I created a Rule and my code goes like this:
AddReference "MySampleLibrary.dll"
Imports SampleClass
Sub Main
Dim myCopyParam As InvSkelCopyParam.SampleClass
myCopyParam = New InvSkelCopyParam.SampleClass
Call myCopyParam.MySampleSub
myCopyParam = Nothing
End Sub
The question is where to put the dll file.
You can change the code inside the rule like this:
AddReference "<Path to DLL>\MySampleLibrary.dll"
But I prefer to set the search path from the Ribbon Tools – Options – iLogic configuration.
This is how I did it. I hope it could be useful to you also.
Ciao,
Ivan
Ivan Temelkov
Autodesk Inventor Customization Enthusiast
www.inventiveworkflows.it
