Different Colors for Different Projects Inv. 2020

[Anonymous]

We are currently switching over to vault and this old guy would love to have a way to differentiate which project is which by a simple color change of the instances of Inventor running. It is normal now to have at least three different projects open with sometimes several models in each project at the same time and we have to rapidly switch between them and I have a hard time keeping track without having to go to manage\projects and check on the active project.....this can be several mouse clicks and this takes valuable time.

Any ideas on color change?

thanks! 

[Mark.Lancaster]

@Anonymous 

Out of the box this is not possible..   But in Inventor you can only have 1 active project running.  IF you switch to another project everything needs to be closed.  In addition if you're using Vault its recommended to use a single based project file.

[Anonymous]

These are different instances of Inventor and it works fine as long as I'm in the right instance of Inventor.....that's the problem, I need a real quick way to pick the correct instance so I'm not working in the wrong project.

We are a custom shop and have to be able to have the assemblies currently in production open all the time to answer questions quickly, but we are also working on new projects inside and outside of vault so multiple instances/projects at once are a must. Multiple computers per user are not in the budget so we improvise. 🙂

[Curtis_Waguespack · Accepted solution]

Hi albert,

I can think of a couple of ways we might do this.

One might be to create multiple Inventor shortcuts and have it use a different "Application Options Import" file for each project and color scheme... basically you would go to Application Options and change these settings:

• Start Up Project

• Color Scheme (set it to use a different Scheme and maybe set it to use a back ground image that is just a solid color)

Then export the options... do this for each Project/color set

Next copy your Inventor shortcut and rename as needed

Then right click on the shortcut and choose Properties, and then edit the Target path to Include a options switch that points to the exported options file 

You do this by adding something like this, but be mindful of the space before the /IMPORTOPTIONS=

"C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Inventor 2020\Bin\Inventor.exe" /IMPORTOPTIONS="C:\Temp\App_Options_Blue.xml"

"C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Inventor 2020\Bin\Inventor.exe" /IMPORTOPTIONS="C:\Temp\App_Options_Yellow.xml"

Then you can pin these shortcuts to the taskbar, etc.

If that approach doesn't work for you, we might create a macro or ilogic rule to set the background based on the current project.

I hope this helps.
Best of luck to you in all of your Inventor pursuits,
Curtis
http://inventortrenches.blogspot.com

[Curtis_Waguespack]

This video of the process might be helpful also:

https://www.screencast.com/t/YTg0ZjQw

[Anonymous]

That would work once we activated that particular instance of IV but by that time I might as well just look at what project I'm currently in. 

When you have multiple instances of IV running and you mouse hover over the IV tray icon you get visibility of the instances running; it's there at that point I would like to see the different colors like the screenshot I included. They little popup instances do not give any idea of what project they are. This most probably is a windows thing and not IV. 

I do like your idea of having the different application options but like I say, I need visibility before that. 

[swalton]

How about virtual desktops?  Spawn a new desktop for each Inventor instance.

I've never used them, but they are an old Unix feature that finally got added to Windows 10.

See: https://www.howtogeek.com/197625/how-to-use-virtual-desktops-in-windows-10/

[Anonymous]

Now that might just work!  I will play a little and try that out............they don't call you an Autodesk Expert Elite for nothin' now do they? 😀  

I know we are not doing things by the book but our company is not a "by the book" company! 

[Curtis_Waguespack]

Hi @Anonymous ,

Okay what about using the code below in a VBA macro or External iLogic rule to set the color.

We don't have access to changing the actual color to other than what the Color Theme uses by default for the "one color" setting, so I just use  little image files to change the color....  they're just 16x16 pixel pictures of a solid color that I created in MS Paint and saved to the Backgrounds folder.

The code just looks at the active project file and changes the color... 

Dim FNamePos As Long
'set a reference to the FileLocations object.
IPJ = ThisApplication.FileLocations.FileLocationsFile
'get the location of the last backslash seperator
FNamePos = InStrRev(IPJ, "\", -1)
'get the project file name with the file extension
IPJ_Name = Right(IPJ, Len(IPJ) - FNamePos)
'get the project name (without extension)
oAcctiveProject = Left(IPJ_Name, Len(IPJ_Name) - 4)


If oAcctiveProject = "Default" Then
    oColor = "Blue"
ElseIf oAcctiveProject = "Test" Then
    oColor = "Yellow"
Else
    oColor = "White"
End If

'background image path
oFolder = "C:\Users\Public\Documents\Autodesk\Inventor 2020\Backgrounds\"
ThisApplication.ActiveColorScheme.ImageFullFileName = oFolder & oColor & ".png"

I hope this helps.
Best of luck to you in all of your Inventor pursuits,
Curtis
http://inventortrenches.blogspot.com

[Anonymous]

Thanks Curtis, I'm afraid that is a little late in the sequence since I can check the current project easily after I expand the current instance of IV. I need my little tray icons indicating how many instances of IV I have to be different colors.