Access API Hidden Members From External IDE

[SometimesInventorMakesMeAngry]

There are hidden members you can access in the built-in VBA IDE by

• Right click in Object Browser > Show Hidden Members

Is it possible to access these members from an external IDE such as Visual Studio?

Specifically, I'd like to start a global transaction

TransactionManager.StartGlobalTransaction

to take advantage of its optimizations (compared to regular transactions)

TransactionManager.StartTransaction

[JelteDeJong · Accepted solution]

Yes its possible like this.

Dim oInv As Inventor.Application = System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal.GetActiveObject("Inventor.Application")
Dim oDoc As Document = oInv.ActiveDocument
Dim trans As Transaction = oInv.TransactionManager.StartGlobalTransaction(oDoc, "<Your description>")
Try
    ' do your stuff here

Catch ex As Exception
    ' do somethng with the exception
End Try
trans.End()

The function "StartGlobalTransaction" is hidden because it can make Inventor work more unstable if you don't end the transaction. There for i would advise you to use a try/catch function like above.

just a quick tip if you are optimizing your program. Check out this and this pages. (The first page also talks about the "StartGlobalTransaction" function.)

[AlexKorzun]

Hi,
There are several VS extensions that provide better support for intellisence. The built-in Object Browser can also help with the discovery. Please note the method you are referring to is discoverable, but it is not documented. Because of that, Autodesk may change or replace it with no warning.

[SometimesInventorMakesMeAngry]

Thank you! I knew about the instability and already had a try catch in place. I wasn't seeing StartGlobalTransaction in Intellisense so I assumed it was not available. But everything worked perfectly just by replacing StartTransaction with StartGlobalTransaction.

[SometimesInventorMakesMeAngry]

I appreciate the warning. Can you explain which extensions you're talking about? I'm not using VS Code, if that's what you're thinking.

[AlexKorzun]

Unfortunately, we cannot recommend any tool or extension for VS, but you can explore the extensions easily via "Manage Extensions" UI:

Visual Studio Object Browser is helpful too:

[SometimesInventorMakesMeAngry]

Thank you! I will check it out.