Inventor Dockable Window Controls

[brotherhogue]

I'm used to creating windows forms with iLogic. I'm trying to graduate to making Addins using a dockable window. my goal is to create a form with controls that users are familiar with in the Inventor UI. here are some examples:

This bit acts like tab controls with a custom UI look.

This bit has an accordion type control to expand and collapse other controls with some unique checkboxes.

This bit shows some custom looking text input fields.

Is it possible to get access to these for programming a custom form?

[WCrihfield]

Hi @brotherhogue.  I am not experienced in creating add-ins, due to restrictions where I work, but I have also created several Windows Forms within iLogic rules, and I think I could point out a few controls you could use.

TabControl 

CheckedListBox 

TextBox 

ComboBox 

I'm not sure about the expandable accordion style controls, but it seems like I have seen folks use a combination of SplitContainer and FlowLayoutPanel with their settings set properly.  I am not that familiar with those two types myself though.  But I do not use the Visual Studio form designer, I just create relatively simple dialogs from scratch, by code, which is obviously 'the hard way'.  It does seem like there may be some things you can add to Visual Studio, sort of like add-ins for it, for those types of controls.

[marcin_otręba]

Hi,

As far i understand you would like to embed inventor input fields, and components into your dockable window ?

Unfortunetelly you can't, what you can do is to get acces to control, even use its icons in your form, and run it with parameters from your form, but UI components like text boxes, check boxes you must re-design in your form, wchich will be embeded in dockable window. I already created some of them in my addins (Even right now i create one form new client...) and to be honest it is not so hard to make it to be the same or to look like it is part of inventor.

Also consider that it not need to be form, you can use usercontrol to embed it in dockable window.

[jjstr8 · Accepted solution]

@brotherhogue:  Inventor uses third-party UI elements from DevExpress.  Besides the cost, I'm not sure how much effort it would take to tweak their components to look just like their implementations in Inventor.  I use WPF for my add-in UI.  There's a learning curve, but WPF lets you customize any UI element to look and function however you like.  For example, you could change a regular button into button that's just an image, or draw your own expander arrow for an expanding/collapsing area.  A WPF window can be "wrapped" and put into an Inventor dockable window.

[bradeneuropeArthur]

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