Can you no longer use iLogic to create External Rule Event Triggers in 2025.3?

[Zackery.Breeland]

So I had an external program that I was using to set event triggers for multiple files referencing external rules.  This was tested and functioning a couple months ago, but I recently tried to use it and it failed to set any of the triggers.  Was something changed in the API with the last Inventor 2025 update that broke this ability?  Does anyone know of a current method through iLogic or VB to set external rules to event triggers?

[bradeneuropeArthur]

Could you please share of what you are using now. The 2025 have changed indeed. To .Net8. This may possibly the reason. But to fund out you will need to share more info and the code.

[Zackery.Breeland]

I'll have to post the code tonight, I only have the program executable with me currently.  Did the framework change from 2025.2 to 2025.3, because I thought Inventor 2025 was initially released with .Net8?  I had the program working 2 to 3 months ago before my company updated our software to 2025.3.

[WCrihfield]

Hi @Zackery.Breeland.  Does your code solution make sure that each document it is attempting to edit the Event Triggers settings for has a 'DocumentInterest' for the iLogic ApplicationAddIn?  For years we had code that was able to edit those settings, and afterwards we could open the Event Triggers dialog and see that the rules were added or removed, but the actual event triggering functionality was unpredictable, seeming to work OK on some documents, but not others.  We later found out from someone at Autodesk that the document that we are editing the event triggers settings for must have a DocumentInterest in it for the iLogic add-in, or those settings would have no event triggering effect.  The simplest way to include a DocumentInterest for the iLogic add-in in the document was to add a temporary/empty internal iLogic rule to that document before attempting the edits.  I usually just named it something like 'Delete Me'.  That rule can later be deleted again, after all event triggers settings editing is done.

I am still using 2024.3.5 at the moment, so I can not be sure if anything has changed behind the scenes in the 2025.3 update myself.

This whole ability for us to edit those settings was sort of 'discovered' by an Inventor user back around 2012, and is based on messing around with something that Autodesk intended to keep 'Hidden' (for internal use only).  There has been a long standing warning in the Autodesk Inventor online help for Inventor API automation (Link) against us using or relying on anything that they have 'hidden', because they may disappear or stop working at any time.  I do not really expect that to happen with this, now that a lot of folks have been utilizing it for years, but who knows.  Maybe they came up with a better system that they want to implement.  If you think about it, the ability to inject things into documents (by code process) that will cause them to automatically run when various events happen, including opening and closing events, can be seen as a potential security risk, which may have been on of the original reasons for keeping that system hidden.  Luckily, they do have some 'higher level' manual settings/controls that can be used to inspect rules for malicious/dangerous stuff and limit those events, if were are actually using those settings.

[Zackery.Breeland]

@WCrihfield my code does not use DocumentInterest in any section. It uses property sets and property IDs, along with trigger names and IDs to access the document properties and set the references.

@bradeneuropeArthur apologies for the delay. I've attached the Visual Studio solution package for the code as well as a PDF printout of the code in case .zip files are a problem for anyone to download.

[WCrihfield]

Since I am not sure how much you may already know about these, I will post a few Links below to where you can read more about them within the Inventor API online help area.  They are relatively simple, and used to indicate that a specific Inventor ApplicationAddIn has an 'interest' in that specific Inventor.Document.  When one of these is present in a document, and is indicating that it is 'interested' in that document, that seems to usually mean the add-in had something to do with defining the contents of that Document, and may still hold some level of influence over it.  Also seems to be used for 'migration' related functionality, based on the originally recorded and current 'data version' of the add-in with an interest in that document.

Document.DocumentInterests 

DocumentInterests 

DocumentInterest 

Anyways, just before attempting to create or edit the contents of the hidden Event Triggers PropertySet in a Document, it is recommended that you first check to see if that Document has a DocumentInterest for the iLogic add-in.  If it does, then no other special actions will be required.  If it does not, then we can simply create a new/empty internal iLogic rule within that Document, which will automatically add a DocumentInterest to that Document, which seems to be required in situations like this.  Once that small step is taken care of, then you can proceed to create or edit the event triggers in that document.  When done editing the event triggers in that document, you may choose to then delete that temporary/empty internal iLogic rule.

Fortunately, I was able to find the Link to that 2019 discussion in this forum where this was revealed by a highly respected Autodesk employee in this subject area, so I will post that below for you and others to reference.  Knowing that small detail, and incorporating something into our solutions for it, made a big difference in downstream stability and functionality.

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/inventor-programming-ilogic/adding-external-rule-to-event-trigger/m-p... 

Most of my 'templates' already had either internal iLogic rules, or internal iLogic forms, iLogic event triggers settings, or multiple of those, so I was not having the troubles that I kept hearing about from others, but when I started a few 'New' documents from the the templates that came installed with Inventor, instead of my custom templates, I was able to see the problems mentioned, because those documents never had any trace of iLogic in them before.

Not sure if this specific issue is what may be causing you any troubles or not...just something to be aware of.