Community
Welcome to the forums and Inventor.
There is a separate forum specfic to the VBA side of Inventor here:
http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/Inventor-Customization/bd-p/120
The sticky links to a great tutorial "My First Plug-in Training" about that side of things:
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=17324828
Sam M.
Inventor and Showcase monkey
Please mark this response as "Accept as Solution" if it answers your question...
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I'll try to give you a quick 2-cent version.
The API can be accessed with alt+F11. This is where you can write macros in VBA.
Inventor is also designed to be used with plug-ins written in third party applications like Visual Studio. You can write these in whatever language you want to.
The third option (depending on your Inventor version) is iLogic. This allows you to write simple macros that live either inside the actual inventor files or in a text document that can easily be accessed within Inventor. This uses a special language that is really just a simple form of VBA.
There's tons of info out there about VBA. Most of it is geared towards Excel, but all of the core VBA stuff carries over. The Inventor specific stuff is covered in Inventor's help files. I usually access it in context via the object browser in the API.
Which option you want to use really depends on what you want to accomplish. I've used all three to varying degrees.
You've already found a pretty awesome resource here, and at the links Sam posted. There's a lot of talent and experience here just waiting for the right question to be asked.
The API can be accessed with alt+F11. This is where you can write macros in VBA.
Inventor is also designed to be used with plug-ins written in third party applications like Visual Studio. You can write these in whatever language you want to.
The third option (depending on your Inventor version) is iLogic. This allows you to write simple macros that live either inside the actual inventor files or in a text document that can easily be accessed within Inventor. This uses a special language that is really just a simple form of VBA.
There's tons of info out there about VBA. Most of it is geared towards Excel, but all of the core VBA stuff carries over. The Inventor specific stuff is covered in Inventor's help files. I usually access it in context via the object browser in the API.
Which option you want to use really depends on what you want to accomplish. I've used all three to varying degrees.
You've already found a pretty awesome resource here, and at the links Sam posted. There's a lot of talent and experience here just waiting for the right question to be asked.
Mike (not Matt) Rattray
Hi fsdolphin,
In addition to the information the others have provided, here is an additional link that covers this subject pretty well:
Autodesk Developer Network
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?id=1079044&siteID=123112
Of particular interest to you might be the "Porting your application from SolidWorks to Autodesk Inventor?" section at the bottom of the page.
I hope this helps.
Best of luck to you in all of your Inventor pursuits,
Curtis
http://inventortrenches.blogspot.com
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