lock a form layout

[DavidTunnard]

Hi All, how would I go about making a form so that it can still be used but the layout etc. of the form cannot be changed?

[Michael.Navara]

Do you mean iLogic form or another one (for example WinForms)?

[DavidTunnard]

yeah, an iLogic form. 

[WCrihfield]

Hi @DavidTunnard.  I know that we can lock down the size limits of the controls we add into an iLogic form, and I know we can specify False for the 'Allow Control Resizing' setting, to not allow that while the form is showing.  But I do not currently know of a good way to 'lock' an iLogic Form from being changed by 'anyone else' but you.  The internal iLogic forms, and global iLogic forms are stored differently.  The internal ones seem to have their 'form specification' stored as a Bit Array, as the value of an Attribute, within a document level AttributeSet, with its name starting with "iLogicInternalUi", followed by some random nonsense.  I don't think we can make a AttributeSet or Attribute 'ReadOnly' though.  The global forms specs are stored in an external XML file (with multiple form specs in a single XML file, not one file for each form), so you might be able to make that XML file ReadOnly.  But that would likely also prevent editing all other global forms.  It seems like I have heard about Vault being able to help with some iLogic related editing restrictions, but I think that was primarily for the rules, since each of them has their own file on disk.  I don't currently have Vault though, so I can't test if that would have any control over specific iLogic forms.  This would be a good question for an Autodesk employee directly.

[DavidTunnard]

Hmm, yeah I think I had seen similar regarding making the XML of a global form read-only. But, if possible then it wants to have no technical interaction from the user as it needs to be as simple as possible so doing that wouldnt be my preferred. and yeah, like you say I think it locks all global forms (even though in this case the customer only has one anyway).

I know it probably isn't available but something like password protection for general documents is what I'm after. Preferably without Vault also.

[JelteDeJong]

Another option would be to create a dll with a form. That way you have all the tools and features of Visual Studio and the VB.net/C#. And they can't be changed by anyone who has access to the source code. The down site is maybe that you need to learn to create forms in Visual Studio.