Inventor Fails to load properly when opened by vba

[MechMachineMan]

Sometime when I open inventor with VBA, it fails to properly load the environments, however, other times it works just fine.

Attached is a picture of what it looks like, and the snipped of code I'm using to open inventor.

Any help would be much appreciated!

Sub Main()	
        Dim oActiveDoc As Document
	oActiveDoc = ThisApplication.ActiveDocument

	Dim oSS As SelectSet
	oSS = oActiveDoc.SelectSet

	If oSS.Count = 0
		Exit Sub
	End If
	
	Dim oNewInv As Object
	oNewInv = GetObject("", "Inventor.Application")

	oNewInv.Visible = True
	
	If Err.Number <> 0 
		MsgBox("Error Opening Inv")
		Exit Sub
	End If
	
	oNewInv.DesignProjectManager.DesignProjects.ItemByName("Default").Activate
	If Err.Number <> 0 
		MsgBox("Error Setting project to default")
		Exit Sub
	End If
	
	oNewAsm = oNewInv.Documents.Add(DocumentTypeEnum.kAssemblyDocumentObject,,True)

        'At this point, actual code adds occurrences based on a select set in the active document (not the new one)

End Sub

*see how there is no ribbon environments opened for assembly, and the model browser is not properly loaded.

[Owner2229]

Hey, I've already seen it in some of your codes, you're calling GetObject("", "Inventor.Application") instead of CreateObject("Inventor.Application").

Also, this doesn't look like VBA to me, so I'm just gonna assume it's VB.Net. I'm using this method to open Inventor as it is more reliable:

Public Function Inventor_StartApp(Optional Visible As Boolean = True) As Inventor.Application
	Dim iApp As Inventor.Application = Nothing
	Try
		Dim iAppType As Type = GetTypeFromProgID("Inventor.Application")
		iApp = CType(CreateInstance(iAppType), Inventor.Application)
		iApp.Visible = Visible
	Catch ex As Exception
		MsgBox("Creation of new Inventor instance failed - " & ex.Message)
	End Try
	Return iApp
End Function

[MechMachineMan]

Do you know if there is other different behaviour between the 2 methods, or
why one would cause it to load correctly?

As far as any documentation I've come across, nowhere really goes in depth
and they all say they are essentially the same function.

[Owner2229]

From Microsoft:

"Use the GetObject function when there is a current instance of the object or if you want to create the object with a file already loaded. If there is no current instance, and you do not want the object started with a file loaded, use the CreateObject function."

So, the GetObject will only pop up new Inventor if there already is one running (aka. the Inventor.exe is loaded).

[MechMachineMan]

---

@Owner2229 wrote:

So, the GetObject will only pop up new Inventor if there already is one running (aka. the Inventor.exe is loaded).

---

Hmm. I don't think this is quite correct.

From my past experience, 

GetObject("", "Inventor.Application")  and

CreateObject("Inventor.Application") 

function the same.

GetObject(,"Inventor.Application") 'NO empty brackets as first arg,

actually grabs the active instance.

GetObjectContext.CreateInstance() appeared to do the same thing, so I always just used GetObject() because it's easier.

HOWEVER, I came across this link this morning that says each one is better in certain situations, and it depends on your needs. However, CreateInstance seems to generally be the safest because it grabs more of the COM routines from what the target application sends it, whereas Get/CreateObject often opens it as light as possible.

See link: http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=24108&seqNum=7

[Owner2229]

Hmm, interesting article. Anyway, you can use it like this:

Dim iApp As Object = GetObject / CreateObject / CreateInstance
If iApp Is Nothing Then
     Threading.Thread.Sleep(100) 'give it some time
     iApp = GetObject / CreateObject / CreateInstance
End If

[MechMachineMan]

Also, the issue isn't that it is failing to load the application completely. As the picture in the original post shows, that is the window that is opened. It is just that it is not properly loading the environments, and will open the window without the proper ribbons shown.

[Owner2229]

That never happened to me. It seems to be a bug in Inventor.

Do you wait for the Inventor to fully load before you send it a command?

[MechMachineMan]

No? Just use it as declaring the object and do not utilize a loop to wait
for ready.

[MechMachineMan · Accepted solution]

I ran across issues with this again when I was trying to run a rule to disable event tracking VBA components immediately after opening... 

Looks like the code was trying to send commands before inventor could receive them, which wasn't causing errors, but also wasn't causing inventor to run the commands.

The fix was to add a wait loop to ensure inventor was ready. Seems to be working just find with this in now!

oInvApp = GetObject / CreateObject / Create Instance

Do Until oInvApp.Ready = True
    System.Threading.Threads.Sleep(10)
Loop