how to listen click event of addin tab?

[liminma8458]

Hi, all,
I am developing an addin. I want to listen to click event of the addin tab to show some message before it shows the below ribbon panels and buttons. Is there any click event for the tab? how can I do it?

[liminma8458]

The attached file shows the tab I want to listen to its click event, or any default tab such as "Tools" or "Manage". Any one can help?

[YuhanZhang]

Unfortunately we don't have the event for click/activate the ribbon tab at present. I am curious about why you want this, maybe you need to do some check before showing some panels/buttons, can you explain more details about what you want to do?

[liminma8458]

Yes. I want to check whether there are more than one Inventor instance open before showing the custom addin panels/buttons. Our addin program only works with one Inventor instance open. But sometimes designers run the program while having 2 or more Inventor instances open, thus causing failure of the program.

Do you have any suggestion on this?

[YuhanZhang]

I don't know how your program works with Inventor, if your program is something like Vault to deal with inventor data, that you can make your data as CheckedIn/CheckedOut to indicate if your current Inventor instance can work on the data. Maybe you can also add an indicator in your program so your addin can check if your program is connecting to current Inventor instance, so you can decide if you will show the ribbon controls(I suggest to always show the controls but you can disable them if you don't want users to use them in some cases). Or if you can tell more details about your program we can find a better suggestion maybe.

[bradeneuropeArthur]

Hi,

Maybe I don't understand correctly, but if you are using the "Inventor Application" of your a addin there is no possibility that the other inventor session is used.

Like this:

Private m_inventorApplication As Inventor.Application

Public Sub Activate(ByVal addInSiteObject As Inventor.ApplicationAddInSite, ByVal firstTime As Boolean) Implements Inventor.ApplicationAddInServer.Activate

m_inventorApplication = addInSiteObject.Application

End sub

With this  method the situation you have is impossible!

How are you declaring your "Inventor Application"?

Regards,

[liminma8458]

To YuHanZhang: Our Addin is a registered DLL addin. It will automatically load with every Inventor session. We do not use Vault. We always open Inventor using a project file. I am currently visiting China, are you in China? If yes, what is your email address, we can arrange a remote desktop to see my application scenario.

To bradeneurope|Arthur: we use your way to get “m_inventorApplication” when defining the addin tab, panels and buttons. But the buttons will call sub DLLs to execute their functions. In the sub DLLs, we use <ThisApplication = Marshal.GetActiveObject("Inventor.Application")> to get ThisApplication directly (may be this is the reason the program loses the track which inventor session it is using. We do not pass the Inventor instance as a parameter from top DLL to sub DLL. Is it?)

[YuhanZhang]

So your problem is that you use the GetActiveObject to get the Inventor application which maybe not the one the addin is loaded in, I think you need to pass the Inventor which you are interested to the functions(from other DLLs) you want to call, this is good practice. Is there any reason that you don't want to pass the Inventor application?

[bradeneuropeArthur]

Hi,

For an addin "<ThisApplication = Marshal.GetActiveObject("Inventor.Application")" is not a good practice.

This is actually the problem I assume.

If you use the m_inventorapplication method the application is fix.

With your method it is random and not fix.

Regards,

[liminma8458]

As I mentioned my addin loads on every Inventor session's interface and shows in addin manager. Do you mean "GetActiveObject" will mess up in which Inventor session should the addin (and sub abbins) run consistantly? and the other way will always keep the handle of the same Inventor Instance (session)?

The reason I use "GetActiveObject" in each addin instead of passing "ThisApplication" as parameter to sub addin is of simplicity of code.

I will try "addInSiteObject" to see what happen.

[YuhanZhang]

Correct, the GetActiveObject will find an Inventor instance in the ROT(Running Object Table), but if you have multiple Inventor instances in the ROT, the method can't guarantee that it always returns the same Inventor instance that you want. To avoid the issue, the good practice is to pass the Inventor Application from the ApplicationAddinSite to your other classes or dlls. You can find some sample VS projects in the Inventor SDK, they may help you to know how to do it, you can install the DeveloperTools.msi from C:\Users\Public\Documents\Autodesk\Inventor 2020\SDK\, then you can find the addin samples in different languages(VB, C# and C++) . For example the one in VB:

    C:\Users\Public\Documents\Autodesk\Inventor 2020\SDK\DeveloperTools\Samples\VB.NET\AddIns\SimpleAddIn

you can see the below code in the StandardAddInServer.vb which passes the Application to other class:

Button.InventorApplication = m_inventorApplication

Hope this helps.

[liminma8458]

I found this post that may be able to intercept the click of an addin tab from Philippe Leefsma ("How to intercept a click event on a custom ribbon tab"). 

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/inventor-customization/how-to-intercept-a-click-event-on-a-custom-rib...

But the code is in C#.  For a long time I haven't practiced C language. I don't know someone can help to cover this to VB.NET. I think that will help people with similar request as mine.

[liminma8458]

I found this post that may be able to intercept the click of an Addin tab from Philippe Leefsma ("How to intercept a click event on a custom ribbon tab").

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/inventor-customization/how-to-intercept-a-click-event-on-a-custom-rib...

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/inventor-chan-pin-ji-shu-ying-yong-tao-lun-qu/inventor-ji-qiao-huo-qu...

But the code is in C#.  For a long time I haven't practiced C. Can someone help convert this short script into VB.NET? I think that will also help people with similar request as mine.

Thank you so much!

[liminma8458]

Hi, Rocky,

Could you help to convert this short C# script into VB.NET? very much appreciated