How to run iLogic rules from assembly with Model States in parts ?
If you want to run that rule within the part, while the assembly is active, you will need to change your line near the end that sets the one iProperty's value from the other iProperty using the iLogic snippet 'iProperties.Value(), because right now it is targeting the assembly, instead of the part. You need to either include the document specific reference, or change them to use the API route Document.PropertySets.PropertySet.Property.Value. Because that iLogic snippet will always target the 'active' document (unless specified otherwise), which in this case remains the main assembly.
Wesley Crihfield
(Not an Autodesk Employee)
There's one other potential issue that I believe I have observed concerning a situation like this, but I don't know if this would have any bearing on your specific problem here. When I was helping someone else sometime last year with a problem he was having involving attempts to run local rules within components, from a main assembly, I found out about a situation that seemed like a bug in the system, related to the ModelStates. When the ModelState of the component was set to one ModelState, but the model document that the component represents is set to a different model state, then the local rule within that model document could not be found, which was causing his assembly level rule to throw errors at the point of running that rule. We did not know what was causing this at first, and the problem seemed to be somewhat random. We checked the code within the local rule until we couldn't think of anything else within it that could possibly be causing any problems. Then I did some experimentation of my own with some local files and local rules. I believe that what I found was similar to what I eluded to above, if the model states were not 'aligned' (set the same), then the local rule could not be found, so the assembly level rule that was trying to run the local rule in the part was encountering an error. But when the component and the model document it represented were both set to the same model state, there was no problem, and everything worked as expected. I don't know if they have fixed that situation yet though, because that was several months ago.
Wesley Crihfield
(Not an Autodesk Employee)
I couldn't figure out which (Original, factory or member) document is used by "iProperties.Value("Custom", "MyProp")" . But when I created my own implementation of that function it worked fine. That looks like this:
Public Sub Main() oDoc = ThisDoc.FactoryDocument Dim oParameters = oDoc.ComponentDefinition.Parameters Dim oMyParameters = oParameters.UserParameters 'Delete parameter MyParam if it exist Try oMyParameters("MyParam").Delete Catch End Try 'Create parameter MyParam MsgBox("Create MyParam") oParameter = oMyParameters.AddByExpression("MyParam", "10", kDefaultDisplayLengthUnits) 'Format MyParam oParameters("MyParam").ExposedAsProperty = True With oParameters("MyParam").CustomPropertyFormat .ShowLeadingZeros = True .ShowTrailingZeros = False .ShowUnitsString = True .Units = "m" .Precision = Inventor.CustomPropertyPrecisionEnum.kThreeDecimalPlacesPrecision End With 'Affect MyParam (formatted) to custom property MyProperty, then delete it MsgBox("Affect MyParam to MyProperty") GetProperty(oDoc, "MyProperty").Expression = GetProperty(oDoc, "MyParam").Expression ' iProperties.Value("Custom", "MyProperty") = iProperties.Value("Custom", "MyParam") MsgBox("Delete MyParam") oMyParameters("MyParam").delete End Sub Public Function GetProperty(doc As PartDocument, name As String) As [Property] Dim propSet As PropertySet = doc.PropertySets.Item("Inventor User Defined Properties") Try Return propSet.Item(name) Catch Throw New Exception(String.Format("Custom property '{0}' could not be found in document: {1}", name, doc.FullFileName)) End Try Return Nothing End Function
Jelte de Jong
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That is definitely an interesting situation. Since I almost never use the 'Regenerate All Rules' tool, I had not observed that unique behavior before, where it causes all rules within all component documents of an assembly to also run. I can see now that it will not run the rule when using that tool from the assembly and while the rule is using the factory document setting. I knew however that using the 'ThisDoc' iLogic term would always be working with the part instead of the assembly though, because it defaults to the 'local' document first, then in situations where there is no local document (like when used in an external rule), it then refers to whichever document was 'active' when the rule first started (not necessarily the 'active' document at that point in the code). But I had not experimented enough yet with using that ThisDoc.FactoryDocument iLogic snippet, so I had not encountered an issue like this before.
When the part is the active document, and the first non-master model state is active, and the rule is using the ThisDoc.Document term, then I run the rule, the rule recognizes there are fewer faces, which makes sense because there are fewer features active in that model state, resulting in fewer faces, as expected. However, there is another little detail that has me a little confused...
When running the rule from the active part, no matter how I get the document object (ThisDoc.Document, ThisDoc.FactoryDocument, or ThisApplication.ActiveDocument), and no matter if I identified it as PartDocument or Document, and no matter if the part currently has the Master model state active, or one of the other model states active, the PartComponentDefinition.IsModelStateMember property always returns False, and the IsModelStateFactory property always returns True. After reading the documentation/description of those two properties, and seeing that all 3 of the above mentioned ways of getting the document result in the same property values, I am confused about either their meaning, or the usefulness of those two iLogic snippets. If those properties are correct, then both of those two iLogic snippets return the factory document, no matter which model state the document is currently set to. I was thinking that any time the model document (identified at the start/top of a rule through normal means) currently had a non-master model state active, it would not be the factory document. Maybe that property is only useful/effective on a document object that is obtained by accessing the document being referenced by an assembly component. Since I know custom model states do not have real standalone slave model files that exist in the file system, like the iPart/iAssembly system had, it is so odd and confusing that there can be both factory and non factory documents when dealing with model states.
Wesley Crihfield
(Not an Autodesk Employee)
