registry free addin for IV2011

[Anonymous]

Hi!

I'm going to create an addin for Inventor 2011. As the addin will be used in later Inventor versions, I have some questions.

In IV2012 API Reference, AddIns/Introduction, a note tells me that "starting with IV 2011, a simpler manifest-based registration mechanism is also supported".

1. Will an addin developped with VS2010 and IV2012 run in IV2011 (assuming just 2011 functionality is needed)?

If not:

2. Where can I get VS 2010 templates for IV2011 which allow the manifest method?

If nowhere:

3. Any tutorial how to use registration free addins in 2011?

Kind regards

Norbert

[gary.wassell]

Hi Norbert,

The Inventor development team always try and ensure backwards compatibility is possible for any AddIns written for Inventor. This means that an Addin written for Inventor 2010 should also work for Inventor 2011 and 2012 etc. There are exceptions to this rule where the product functionality changes so much that backwards compatibility doesn't make sense.

This means that an Addin you've written for Inventor 2011 should also work for Inventor 2012, but may not work for Inventor 2010.

However an Addin written for Inventor 2010 should also work for Inventor 2011 and 2012.

Either way you would really need to test your Addin for all of the relevant versions of Inventor to be 100% sure.

The 'old' method for registering Addins will also still be available indefinitely (we'd make an announcement of it were to go away), so Addins that register themselves via the registry should continue to work in the future.

There is information relating to registry free Addins in the Inventor Programming Help files provided with the Inventor Install.

From the Inventor user interface go to Help->Community Resources->Programming Help.

Once these help files are up, perform a search on 'add-in-registration', and you'll see there is a topic listed on registry free Addins.

I hope that is useful!

Cheers

Gary Wassell

Developer Technical Services

Autodesk

[Anonymous]

Hi Gary,

thanks for quick answering!

Maybe my question was not very clear:

If I develop a .NET-AddIn for IV2012 - will it work for IV2011 (just using IV2011 functionality)?

If not: Are there any VS2010-templates for IV2011?

If not: Is there any documentation about creating registry-free addins for IV2011?

If not: is the documentation for converting the addins in the help topic you mentioned also applicable for Inventor 2011?

Kind regards

Norbert

[gary.wassell]

Hi Norbert,

ah! - sorry. The registry free Addin mechanism was introduced in Inventor 2012, and so won't work in any previous Inventor releases.

I'm not aware of any plans to retrofit this mechanism to previous Inventor versions either,

Cheers

Gary

[Anonymous]

Hi Gary,

if so, I can live with it. But I'm a little bit surprised because the help talks about "introduced in IV 2011".

Also, in %APPDATA% I find a folder Inventor 2011\Addins containing files like Autodesk.AEC-Austausch.Inventor.addin, like Autodesk.InventorStudio.Inventor.addin.

Kind regards

Norbert

[gary.wassell]

Hi Norbert,

the references to registry free Addins and Inventor 2011 are likely a mistake on our part.

Just so you know some of the history with registry free addins - the mechanism had been under development for a over a year, and we did attempt to introduce the system into Inventor 2011 (so the documentation originally reflected this, and there could well be some other 'evidence' that you notice too), but there wasn't sufficient time to complete everything required in time, so full implementation was delayed until Inventor 2012. It seems that the things you've noticed simply weren't updated to 2012.

I'll double check with my colleagues in the engineering team later this week anyhow, just to ensure I have all my facts right though.

Cheers

Gary

[gary.wassell]

Hi Norbert,

I checked with our development team, and what I said in my earlier post was correct in that the registry free addin mechanism was formally introduced with Inventor 2012.

Any reference to Inventor 2011 is a remnant of our efforts to slip this functionality in a year earlier, and should be ignored.

Cheers

Gary

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

Hi Gary,

thank you for your efforts!

Cheers

Norbert