Speed increases when moving mouse over inventor window

[JelteDeJong]

I was looping over all ControlDefinition when i noticed something strange. If i move over the inventor window then my program becomes much faster. I did notice this before (on a addon that i maintain) but was never able to prove it. But now i could with the code below. (Its a class of a program that i use to write/test ilogic rules. For people who want to try it the complete program it can be found on github. )

Public Class ThisRule
    Sub Main()
        Dim doc As PartDocument = ThisDoc.Document
        Dim sw As Stopwatch = New Stopwatch()
        Dim list As List(Of Integer) = New List(Of Integer)()
        Dim i = 0
        For Each def As ControlDefinition In ThisApplication.CommandManager.ControlDefinitions

            i = i + 1
            list.Add(sw.ElapsedMilliseconds)
            If i = 25 Then

                Dim ave = list.Average()
                Console.SetCursorPosition(1, 1)
                Console.WriteLine(ave)
                list.Clear()
                i = 0
            End If
            sw.Restart()
        Next

    End Sub
end Class

i found for 25 iterations my computer needs on avarage:

• 180 to 190 miliseconds when my mouse is not moving or not on the Inventor window.
• 10 to 15 miliseconds when my mouse is moving over the inventor window.

That is a huge difference.

Did someone else notice this behaviour?

Is this a bug?

Can we exploit this to speed up long runing tasks. (like configurators)?

[JhoelForshav]

Hi @JelteDeJong 

This is a known behavior... see @BrianEkins response in this thred:

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/inventor-customization/why-execution-is-faster-when-mouse-moving-on-s...

"This is a known behavior and is common with among all programs that support a COM API interface. What's happening is that Inventor has a single main thread that is handling all interaction with Inventor. This includes using the UI and also external API calls. Inventor is watching the UI and also watching for API calls to come in from the single thread. This is one of the biggest reasons that running an out-of-process program is much slower than running in-process. For some reason moving the mouse causes Inventor to more frequently handle the incoming API calls.

The solution to this is to use the Application.UserInterfaceManager.UserInteractionDisabled property. This blocks all interaction with the UI and allows Inventor to focus on the incoming API calls. You'll need to set it to True at the beginning and then back to False at the end so you can interact with Inventor after the program has finished running."

[JelteDeJong]

Thanks for the response. I did not see that post form @BrianEkins . That explains why i see this on my test utility. It runs out of process. The strange thing is that i have seen this behaviour also in a addon that should be runing in process. Should I come to the conclusion that the addon is not running in process for some reason?

[JhoelForshav]

@JelteDeJong 

In this addin that is meant to run in process, are you always using the AddinSiteObject.Application as the Inventor.Application Object? I mean, if you've created a form for your addin, - does that form use that application object or do you obtain the application object like GetObject( , "Inventor.Application") or similar?

I believe if you always make sure to use the AddinSiteObject everything will be ran in process 🙂

[BrianEkins]

I don't know of any cases where an add-in would be impacted by this. If you have one it would be interesting to see.

Something that I frequently do when I'm running an EXE is instead of moving the mouse around to speed things up I move into the inventor window and right-click to show the context menu.  This has the same effect and is much easier.

[JelteDeJong]

Im still trying to figure this out. i searched the complete solution for the text "Inventor.Application". I did find it in the text but they where there as a fail save for the times we will run this code in purpose out of process. (for debuging we often start the addin as a executable) i cant explain that the addon look to run out of process...

Is there a way to test/check if the Inventor.Application object is running "In process" or "Out of process"?