Creating addins without Visual Studio

[Anonymous]

Hi.

Currently I have no access to commercial version of Visual Studio (I can't use Community version for purposes of my company) and I wonder if there is any convenient way to create an Inventor addin without using that software. For now lets consider only external addin (running outside Inventor, not listed in Add-ins window, running for example from an .exe file). Creating internal addins without Visual Studio may be too hard, especially generating .addin file about which I don't have any knowledge.

For now I see two options (in general):

1. Using alternative IDE to Visual Studio - SharpDevelop for example. It looks pretty nice and since I don't want to use it for big project its functionality should be enough for me. I only wonder about debugging. I don't know if debugging software like Inventor would be possible. Do you know anything about that?

The biggest advantage of this option is being still within .NET technology and that's why I am considering it firstly.

2. Using alternative environement and technology. I have some experience with Python and there is on the Internet some examples of small programs collaborating with Inventor in Python. Of course there will be also some issues while developing addins in Python - casting for example and debugging could be even harder than in SharpDevelop.

What do you think about that? I am worry mostly about debugging and solution with most convenient debugging would be the best for me.

Please share you insights. And for clarity let's do not talk about VBA and iLogic and focus on everything except that.

[JamieVJohnson2]

The inventor API is written for .Net any IDE that does not explicitly work with .Net (and of the correct version) will hinder your attempts.  Since VS Community Edition is free, the only 'limit' would be your IT department saying so.  If you are serious about developing for Inventor then they need to get you past that.  I haven't heard of a developer here who has attempted anything other than the Microsoft IDEs (Visual Studio and the built in VBA IDE) or built in iLogic IDE.  But when it comes down to it, you have a bunch of text files and a compiler.

You don't need to use the add-in template if you don't plan on making a bona-fide Inventor application add-in.  You can (and I do) make a separate threaded exe program that will access the active Inventor or open a new one.  You just need to reference the Autodesk.Inventor.Interop set.  If you do want to make the add-in, then get the output of the template from somebody (I posted one here not too far back), and make your project create / use the same files and references.