VB.net Find Face by face name.

[aaron_lucy]

I just got Inventor 2019 and i am trying to automate the process of selecting faces and exporting them to a .dxf file.  Does anyone have an example in .net of selecting faces by the faces "Assigned Name"?

[MechMachineMan]

I've looked through the online programming help and can't see anything about grabbing the face names...

[BrianEkins]

What do you mean by "Assigned Name"?  Faces don't have a name.  However, API attributes are commonly used as a way to associate information with a face and that information can be used later to find that face again.  Essentially, using attributes as a way to name a face.  

[MechMachineMan]

@BrianEkins

Looks like a new addition to the UI for 2019...

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/inventor-products/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2019...

[BrianEkins]

@MechMachineMan, thanks for pointing this out.  I know they had been talking about providing this capability as part of iLogic but I didn't know it had gone into the product.

Regarding the original question, I took a look at this and the iLogic naming is using API attributes to implement it.  Remember that iLogic is an add-in and is using the same API functionality that everyone else is to provide its functionality.  Here's some code that will return a Face or Edge object that has the specified name.

Public Sub GetNameTest()
    Dim doc As PartDocument = ThisApplication.ActiveDocument
    Dim faceOrEdge As Object = GetNamedEntity(doc, "Brian")
End Sub


Public Function GetNamedEntity(doc As Inventor.Document, name As String) As Object
    Dim attribMgr As AttributeManager = doc.AttributeManager
    Dim objsFound As ObjectCollection
    objsFound = attribMgr.FindObjects("iLogicEntityNameSet", "iLogicEntityName", name)
    
    If objsFound.Count > 0 Then
        Return(objsFound.Item(1))
    Else
        Return(Nothing)
    End If
End Function

The AttributeManager utility provides a good view of what's going on.

[aaron_lucy]

Thanks @BrianEkins.  That was exactly what i needed!