Open PDF through Inventor VBA

[eric.frissell26WKQ]

Hi, I'm working on a script to automate some basic tasks we have to do upon release of our assemblies and for the life of me I can't find any information on the call to open a file with adobe as everything is referencing Excel.  Lots of information for Workbooks.open(filepath) but nothing for Inventor.  I suppose there's a round about way of using Inventor to open Excel to create use the Workbooks.open but that seems like a lot of work.

Second once the pdf is open I'd like to access the Fill and Sign.  Any chance anyone knows the syntax for this?

Also, technically speaking, would the one line that opens Adobe be a reference, a call, a method, a formula?  Example OpenCF = Shell("Acrobat.exe ""CFDocPath""", vbNormalFocus).  Curious since I'm sure those words get mixed up a lot and VBA isn't taught in mechanical courses.

[pcrawley]

iLogic:

ThisDoc.Launch(pdfPath & "\" & pdfFilename)

As for your second question - no idea sorry! 

[eric.frissell26WKQ]

@pcrawley Ah, it looks so close, I'm looking for the VBA version.... but it might put me down the right avenue to throw references to a Document.Open and see if it sticks.  Thanks!

[A.Acheson · Accepted solution]

Here is a nice simple example that should work. Contacting the pdf application and making changes is a whole different ball game. Some deep diving on stack overflow might yield something fruitful. 

Function OpenAnyFile(strPath As String)
  Set objShell = CreateObject("Shell.Application")
  objShell.Open(strPath)
End Function

Sub Test()
  Dim pdfPath as String
  pdfPath = "C:\example.pdf"
  Call OpenAnyFile(pdfPath)
End Sub

[pball · Accepted solution]

This is what I used to open pdfs/dwgs when I still used VBA. Should open any file you can double click in explorer to open. To access the fill and sign I have no idea about that.

Dim myShell As Object
Set myShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
myShell.Run "C:\Misc\Vault2022.jpg"

[eric.frissell26WKQ]

Thanks @A.Acheson and @pball , you guys nailed it.  I found roughly the same thing this morning as well, I was able to use 

    Else
        Dim CFpdf As Object
        Set CFpdf = CreateObject("Shell.Application")
        Shex.Open (CFDocPath)

and get it to open

Fun part number 2 will be getting it to use the Fill and Sign...

Thanks for the help!