topic 2013 Inventor Viewer ActiveX appears to be broken same as 2012 Viewer in Inventor Programming Forum

2013 Inventor Viewer ActiveX appears to be broken same as 2012 Viewer

Anonymous — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 15:39:04 GMT

2013 Inventor Viewer ActiveX appears to be broken same as 2012 Viewer.

Pre 2012 we were able to embed the Viewer ActiveX into VB.NET 2010 Visual Basic programs.

Not so with 2012 and 2013.

I get a fatal error when trying to draw the control on a standard form.

This is unacceptable.

We depend on the activeX control as the interface for our manufacturing floor barcode system.

We did not upgrade to 2012 just because of this problem.

If we had upgraded Engineering could create files but manufacturing could not see them.

It seems ridiculous to pay upgrade fees annually when we cannot use the upgraded product.

After a year of not being able to get it to work and getting no response from Autodesk we are extremely displeased.

Has anyone gotten the 2013 Inventor Viewer to work with Vb.NET 2010. If so can walk through it step by step.

Thank you

Re: 2013 Inventor Viewer ActiveX appears to be broken same as 2012 Viewer

Anonymous — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 15:13:52 GMT

I never had any luck with the 64bit viewer control (got errors in visual studio), but I do use the viewer control in Inventor 2012 via the 32bit version. It is located in /bin/Bin32.

Re: 2013 Inventor Viewer ActiveX appears to be broken same as 2012 Viewer

Anonymous — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 17:54:29 GMT

FarrenYoung,

I just wiped my Windows 7 32 bit PC and resinstalled Windows. I am only going to install VS.NET and the 2013 32 bit viewer initially in an effor to get it to embed successfully.

What version of VB.NET are you running? Is it 2010 Standard Version or Express.

What Framework are you referencing? 3.5, 4.0???

Would please elaborate on the step you took to embed the 2012 32 bit Invenor Viewer ActiveX in visual studio.

Thanks,

Re: 2013 Inventor Viewer ActiveX appears to be broken same as 2012 Viewer

Anonymous — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 18:20:55 GMT

You actually didn't need to install 32bit windows or 32bit Inventor (as opposed to 64 bit) for this to work. It is fine if thats what you would normally run, but not required.

I am running 64 bit windows/inventor with vs 2010 professional. I believe Inventor 2012 will only support .net 3.5 so that is what I'm using.

It should be as easy as loading your project in VS, opening your form the control will go on, go to the toolbox in visual studio, right click and choose items. On the com tab go to browse, then in the Inventor bin folder choose ""C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Inventor 2012\Bin\InventorViewCtrl.ocx" or "C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Inventor 2012\Bin\Bin32\InventorViewCtrl.ocx" if you're running 64bit windows/Inventor. Make sure it is checked and then close dialog. The Inventor Viewer control should be in the toolbox now. Drag it to your form and it should work.

Re: 2013 Inventor Viewer ActiveX appears to be broken same as 2012 Viewer

Anonymous — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 18:56:28 GMT

Thanks Farrel,

I needed 32 bit on this PC in any case. I will be shifting to 64 bit eventually but right now I have too many irons in the fire if you know what I mean. 😉

Your procedure is the same as I use(d) to embed the ActiveX. Just checking to see if something was different.

I could not get 2012 to work with VB.NET standard and Framework 3.5. The minute I would draw the control on the form it would cause a system crash which is why I posted the original and many other posts on the topic.

Same thing happened with 2013 a couple of day ago.

I had both Inventor 2011 and 2012 and numerous other autodesk products as well as Solidworks installed on my PC at the time.

As a sanity check I am clearing out the PC entirely and starting over with just the 2013 viewer.

I that doesn't work and it does on yours then I think the problem could possibly be with VS.

What service pack are you running with VS?

Re: 2013 Inventor Viewer ActiveX appears to be broken same as 2012 Viewer

Anonymous — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 20:35:26 GMT

It may be a 32bit issue. If you could try installing 64 bit on some machine and referencing the 32bit dll from the bin32 folder it might work (does for me.) Like you said, it could also be a VS issue.

Microsoft Visual Studio 2010
Version 10.0.40219.1 SP1Rel

For what it's worth, the 32bit version of my InventorViewCtrl.ocx file is
file version 16.1.19000.0

size 298 KB

I would assume the 32bit version would be the same on actual 32bit install and the 32bit folder with 64bit install, but it could be different.

Re: 2013 Inventor Viewer ActiveX appears to be broken same as 2012 Viewer

Anonymous — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 16:28:29 GMT

Okay another day

Finished all my Win7 32 bit updates. Installed VS 2010 Professional. Installed SP1 and more updates. Yeesh!

Installed the 2013 viewer. Tried to ChooseItem InventorViewerCtrl.ocx. No autodesk anything under COM components. *No Joy*

Googled about and found the wiki for the control. Strangely nothing about embeding to VB. Just office products and HTML. Noted that the Control needs to be registered with Regsvr32 before use.

Did that. Tried to ChooseItem again. Control found this time. Drew the control on the form. set FileName to a known IPT file. Bang. Out of memory error. Notice that there was no reference to Apprentice..

*No happyness in mudville.*

Thought about it for a bit and decided to actually run the InventorViewCtrl.exe. It evenually loaded the part so I knew that portion was working.

Started over with my test VB Project. Chose Item and drew it. Looked good. Checked references and HEY!!! there was an Apprentice Ref. There are two InventorViewerctrl interop refs as well. One starting with RX the other not.

Don't know if this is normal for 2013. Ran the VB project.

*** Let the trumpets blare. ***

After a year of trying with 2012 the 2013 control Finally worked.

So the key apparently is to register the ocx. Then run the exe at least once which probably registers apprentice.

There after you should be able to use the control.

I am sure having had every InventroViewer version since V10 to now installed (At sometime) on this box did not help either. I had issues with VS selecting the wrong version in references big time.

In any case it looks like we are off the ground now.

Re: 2013 Inventor Viewer ActiveX appears to be broken same as 2012 Viewer

Anonymous — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 22:48:23 GMT

Spoke too soon. *Sigh*

Opened an older 2011 VB.NET Project that used the 2011 Inventor View Control. Deleted control from the form.

Removed the Control from the toolbar with Delete. Deleted all Autodesk Refs. Saved reopened the Project.

Added the 2013 control to the toolbar. Checked the Refs all looked good.

Drew the Control on the form and renamed it as the old control name. Rebuilt the project and it seemed to work at first but only on the first file loaded. Thereafter it crashed clean out of the VB.Net Project with no errors.????

Tried this repeatedly. Setting the filename to a new filename is inside a try catch end try error trap. Doesn't stop it at all it just crashes with no error. The catch doesn't catch it.

Looked at the references and now the RX interop replaced in Refs with an "is missing" note.

Closed everything. rebooted. Opened up a new clean project and tried to choose and draw the control on the new empty form. Bang/. I get a message that says the control needs to be registered???

Registered it again and makes not difference. I keep getting the same message." the control needs to be registered"

I did nothing but install the 2013 Autodesk Design Review since the first successful run of the 2013 Inventor Viewer control.

Anyone know what the heck is going on here?

Re: 2013 Inventor Viewer ActiveX appears to be broken same as 2012 Viewer

Anonymous — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 15:58:28 GMT

Another New Day. *TGIF*

Still trying to get the 2013 Inventor Viewer Control to work on a Win 7 32 bit Machine

with VS.2010 Professional. SP1.

Looks Like I have t use Framework 3.5. Framework 4.0 causes the error:

"Failed to import the ActiveX control. Please ensure it is properly registered."

Occasionally using Framework 3.5 also fails but instead it give an error.

"missing AxInventorViewControl ..." The interop.AxinventorViewControl is missing from the project references.

When it does accept the control it can only load one ;maybe two files.

The second or third time you try to load a file in a running session your running project crashes without any errors

The code I am using for the test is an clean project with a button and the Inventor Viewer Control. and the following code.

[code]

Public

ClassForm1

PrivateSub Button1_Click(sender As System.Object, e As System.EventArgs) Handles Button1.Click

Dim oFDialog AsNewOpenFileDialog

With oFDialog

.Filter ="*.ipt|*.ipt"

.FilterIndex = 0

If .ShowDialog = Windows.Forms.DialogResult.OK Then

AxInventorViewControl1.FileName = .FileName

EndIf

EndWith

End Sub

End Class

[/code]

Any Help?

Do I have to do something to clear out the previous file in 2013?

Tried AxInventorViewControl1.FileName = Noting before setting the filename. Still crashes.

Re: 2013 Inventor Viewer ActiveX appears to be broken same as 2012 Viewer

Anonymous — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 14:38:36 GMT

Monday. Problem still exists. Can someone from Autodesk please respond?

Thank you.

Re: 2013 Inventor Viewer ActiveX appears to be broken same as 2012 Viewer

Anonymous — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 21:18:32 GMT

Have you gotten to the bottom of this yet? I too am having problems with some Apprentice code. I developed it last year using 2012, now we upgraded to 2013, and it doesnt' work anymore. See here and here. Sounds like our problems might be somewhat related.

Re: 2013 Inventor Viewer ActiveX appears to be broken same as 2012 Viewer

Anonymous — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 18:02:09 GMT

Autodesk is reportedly working on a fix for the Inventor 2013 Viewer control. According to Autodesk It appears to be a problem with their compiled control not with how we are trying to use it.

I know nothing about the apprentice.dll other than the Viewer control makes use of it.

Did you turn in a bug report with examples?

Re: 2013 Inventor Viewer ActiveX appears to be broken same as 2012 Viewer

Anonymous — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 20:16:27 GMT

I submitted a bug report yesterday. It's the first time I've submitted one to Autodesk support. I haven't heard back yet. Does it normally take them over a day to reply?

Did they give you a timeframe for their fix?

Re: 2013 Inventor Viewer ActiveX appears to be broken same as 2012 Viewer

Anonymous — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 20:59:18 GMT

I've never gotten much in the way of feedback from bug reporting. Though I can tell you the more samples / examples you can give that absolutely re-creates the issue is necessary for them to sit up and take notice.

My problem was not always repeatable. Eventually I found out it was only occuring on 2011 Sheetmetal Parts, Assemblies, and Drawings. Standard parts worked fine. Others would test with 2013 solid parts and they would not get an error.

You might try to get your VAR to make arrangements for someone at autodesk development to contact you by email.

Re: 2013 Inventor Viewer ActiveX appears to be broken same as 2012 Viewer

Anonymous — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 13:54:08 GMT

I have had a similar problem but with embedding the viewer into Excel and office products. I am running 64 bit Windows 7, Inventor 2013, and Office 2010, I have registered the InventorViewCtrl.ocx via regsvr32 and it stated the install was successful however Excel dose not see the Inventor View Control via the Object->Insert function within excel. It seems to me that, From researching the issue, the control does create a registry entry but it almost as if it places it in the wrong place and Excel can not read link to it.

Re: 2013 Inventor Viewer ActiveX appears to be broken same as 2012 Viewer

xiaodong_liang — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 02:22:15 GMT

Hi,

For all who are having issues with Inventor view control 2013, please try with Inventor View 2013 Service Pack 1.1 if it helps.

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/pc/item?siteID=123112&id=20462274

Replying the question of message 15 from mecheng:

I have not an idea if Inventor View Control can also support [Create Object]. But the control appears in OLE server correctly. Of course, on 64bits, you will need to register the version in C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Inventor 2013\Bin\Bin32\InventorViewCtrl.ocx instead of C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Inventor 2013\Bin\InventorViewCtrl.ocx,

Re: 2013 Inventor Viewer ActiveX appears to be broken same as 2012 Viewer

Anonymous — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 06:45:16 GMT

Hi,

Please help me to solve this problem http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/Autodesk-Inventor-Customization/Fail-to-load-InventorviewCtrl-ocx-2013-ActiveX/m-p/3590922/thread-id/39792/highlight/false .
Thanks in advance.

Ranajit.

Re: 2013 Inventor Viewer ActiveX appears to be broken same as 2012 Viewer

Anonymous — Mon, 23 Jun 2014 03:41:18 GMT

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