Inventor Addin To Do list

[jacob.dillingham]

So basically I would like to create an Inventor Addin that has a dockable window displaying a To Do List for a designer to create a detailed installation drawing. currently I have all of the 50+ tasks for the list in an excel file with a yes or no selection on whether the task has been completed or not. I imagine it would be best to have the addin import the information from excel to the docked window, designer makes changes as they progress, and then it exports it back to the excel file when done. The excel file would be unique to each Inventor drawing. 

I'm curious if anyone has done anything like this for inventor and can give me a head start as far as the programming for it or just a point in the right direction.

[matt_jlt]

Maybe an alternative to an excel file would be a csv file if it is just a to do list. That way you can still open it in excel but its as easy as reading it line by line and loading into a list box or something.

No idea what your experience level is but maybe start with the myfirst plugin or something.

You are probably looking for a simple form interface that has a list box of some sort
To load the information you can search stack overflow / google depending on which way you want to go. Excel / CVS /XML / Text file (https://www.dotnetperls.com/streamwriter-vbnet - this will show you how to read/write a text file)

The rest you can google / use the sample addins provided in the SDK etc.

Other than that you will need to provide a lot more information so we can help you.

[jacob.dillingham]

Awesome that's really nice info. As far as programming I know next to nothing but have a good enough understanding of it to learn how to write this enough to get a proof of concept idea working. But when it comes to best practices, or in this case using a csv file, I wouldn't have known to do. 

I was working through the myfirst plugin yesterday. Unfortunately I found out my company has security permissions on certain aspects that are necessary for creating my own addin. So I will have to work some this weekend on my personal machine to try and learn more about it.

I don't want this to be a, "Hey can yall make this for me?" type post. I want to kinda learn how this is done for my experience. And so getting this reference information or possibly other addins that I can look at and build off of or use bits and pieces here and there will be extremely helpful. I can provide the test To Do List excel file that I've created that runs through all of the tasks broken out into different "HEADER" groups. 

[matt_jlt]

For an addin / not a 'plugin'. A good starting point s brian ekins template
https://ekinssolutions.com/nifty_addin_template/

There are also working examples in the Inventor SDK you can use for reference

You can definitely use excel files with no issues. It just means that you need to interface with excel or the new com / interface that inventor uses now to read the file.

Most of the stuff you want to do has likely been done before so you can search the forums for help + stack overflow etc.

[matt_jlt]

Here is an example of an iLogic rule i tweaked for you that will open / read an excel file. It assumes the excel file is the same name as the current document name.

Can easily be changed. might be a helpful reference for you. Also the iLogic doesnt use any direct iLogic functions so can also be used in any .net Addin / Plugin.

https://github.com/mattjlt/Inventor-Code-Library/blob/master/Snippets/GEN_Excel_Read%20File%20Into%2...

Regards, Matt.

[JelteDeJong]

There is another advantage to using CSV over excel files.  Depending on your excel version it becomes increasingly difficult to open and read them. Newer versions of Excel are more ready for cloud usage and therefore the COM capabilities get dropped. But CSV files can be opened by any ASCII reader which is much easier (at least as long as you are not writing).

Anyway, I have 3 addons in the Autodesk AppStore. From 2 of those, you can find the source code on github. you can use those as examples if you like:

ShowFullyConstraint: MySite, GitHub, AppStore

OccurrenceBundler: MySite, Github, AppStore

Something else that you can consider create an iLogic rule that does what you want. And create a button for it. For  creating the button you can use my addon "Button Constructor". In that case, you don't need to create an addon and don't need the software to make it.