Check Inventor is idle

[DWhiteley]

I need to check that Inventor is "idle" (doing nothing), so that I can run an external programme on it.

I have used:

strSBText = OApp.StatusBarText

If strSBText = "Ready" Or strSBText = "For Help, press F1" Then....

However, this does not work if "Dynamic prompts" is switched on.

Now, I remember some time back, being told of another way, but I can't remember the solution!

Can anyone prompt my mwemory on this?

Thanks in advance,

Dave

[DWhiteley]

Just to add to this, I need to know if the user is not using Inventor.

Now isn't there something you could do with events to check if the mouse/keyboard is idle within Inventor?

Dave

[ekinsb]

Hi Dave,

An OnIdle event has never been exposed through the Inventor API.  The true Windows OnIdle probably wouldn't be all that useful because it does mean that the Inventor message queue is empty so Inventor is idle but that can happen for a fraction of a second as the user is still working.

One possible solution is to check to see if the currently active command is the default command.  There's a propety on the Document that returns the name of the default command for that document type.  I think it's always the select command anyway.  This will tell you that the user is not currently in the middle of a command.

[DWhiteley · Accepted solution]

Thanks Brian,

That's what I was looking for! It is:

oDoc.DefaultCommand = "AppSelectNorthwestArrowCmd"

Dave