IV2009: How do i retrieve the object type (SketchEntity::ReferencedEntity)?

[kvetter]

Hello.

I want to retrieve all external "context" references of a part document.

My solution is:
- Loop through all feature
- Loop through all sketches
- Loop through all sketch entities and search for referenced entities

But, how do i retrieve the right object type of the property "ReferencedEntity" (Object "SketchEntity")?

I got the object, but where can i get the object type of the reference?

Thanks in advance.
Klaus

[Josh_Petitt]

what language?



you should be able to use object.Type to get the type constant.

[kvetter]

I'm using C#.

Meanwhile i got the type of the referenced entity (using Microsoft.VisualBasic.Information.TypeName(...)).
The retrieved type is "_IRxWorkPoint", but here's the next problem.

The interop (Autodesk.Inventor.Interop.dll) has an definition of this type, but didn't expose this type for using.

Any idea?

[Josh_Petitt]

AFAIK, all Inventor objects define a method .Type that will return a ObjectTypeEnum (e.g. kWorkPointObject). This will allow you to determine what type of object you've got. Use this to then cast your generic object to a more specific object (if needed). (I think C# implemented a built-in "safe cast" that can be used.)

[Josh_Petitt]

If you are trying to execute different code depending on what type of object you have, then a slick way to do this is to create a map (or associative container, I don't know exactly what they call it in C#). For the key use the Microsoft.VisualBasic.Information.TypeName(...) function (this returns a string), and for the value store a functor. Then you can loop thru the objects and grab the appropriate functor out of the map. This avoids having a huge, slow, "if...then...elseif...else" branching statement.



Although, if you only have to handle a few object types, then this may be more overhead than is required.

Edited by: Josh_Petitt on May 26, 2009 4:30 PM