Using Fusion API from outside Fusion

[jean-marc_langlois]

Hi all,

I am new to both Fusion and its API. I already took a good look at the API, watched a few tutorials, etc. It looks very complete and it will allow us to implement the functionality we need. 

One fundamental question for which I did not find an answer is the following:

- Is it possible to use the API from "outside" Fusion.exe ?

By this I mean having the ability, from another .exe to "drive" an existing / running Fusion.exe session.

I have worked earlier with he Inventor API, and I was indeed able to "attach" to the running Inventor.exe process and add features (planes, circles, lines, etc. ) in the active Inventor part file from another application using the Inventor API from that other application.

Is it possible to do the same with Fusion ?

Thanks for any comments you may have,

Jean-Marc Langlois

[BrianEkins · Accepted solution]

The Fusion API does not support driving it from an external process as Inventor does. The Inventor API is built using Microsoft's Component Object Model (COM) technology which is what enables this capability. Using COM was not an option for Fusion because it's only supported on Windows and Fusion also needs to support Mac. I know there are some people that have concocted workarounds to be able to pass information to an add-in they have created and which is running in Fusion and then the add-in can perform actions based on the information passed to it. This uses whatever technology the programming language and OS supports and has nothing to do with the Fusion API.

[jean-marc_langlois]

Thank you Brian for the quick response, and for confirming what I suspected all along. This means that we'll have to implement some interprocess communication between Fusion and our own application - it shouldn't be too difficult, there are many options and examples out there on how this can be done.

Regards

JM Langlois