Registry based add-ins in 2024

[dinomyar]

There was a workaround to get registry based legacy add-ins to be loaded in Inventor. That workaround does not seem to work in Inventor 2024. Is it supposed to work? If not, how do you get a registry based add-in to load?

[Michael.Navara]

Here is description how to convert addin to registry free Converting an Existing Add-In to be Registry-Free

Loading addins using regasm is no longer supported.

[jjstr8]

@Michael.Navara :  Do you find that having a manifest in the dll is required?  I've tried it with and without, and the add-in still runs.  In either case, the information in your link seems outdated.  All you should need to do is add a new "Application Manifest File (Windows Only)" to your project and modify it to only have the information in the help link.  VS will embed the manifest in your dll when it builds.

[dinomyar]

The issue we had trying to convert our add-in is that our installer could not put the file in the correct location to get loaded. The link provided still shows the location as 

%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Autodesk\Inventor Addins\

but the help file now says 

All Users, Version Dependent(Since Invetnor 2024 the below folder is used to place the .addin manifest files instead of the legacy %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Autodesk\Inventor 20xx\Addins\ folder)

Windows 10/11 - %PROGRAMFILES%\Autodesk\Inventor 20xx\Bin\Addins\

If this is correct, then we should be able to get it installed with our installer.

The only issue that this raises is that when our software is installed, we do not know what version of Inventor the user has and is using (maybe multiple versions), so we would have to support both methods of loading. Also, if the user upgrades their Inventor, then our add-in wont be available since it was installed into a version specific directory, and we will have to deal with support issues when that happens for every customer that uses Inventor and that will make supporting Inventor costly. The registry load method eliminates this issue since it works with all releases of Inventor and our add-in could be placed anywhere.

[jjstr8]

Don't you need admin for %PROGRAMFILES% as well?  In any case, could your installer create all of the \Inventor 20xx\Bin\Addins\ folders that the addin supports?  I don't know if the Inventor installer would wipe out an existing \Bin folder.

[dinomyar]

Yes, our installer requires admin rights. Our products use the Autocad OEM engine and it requires admin rights, so most of our customers will have IT do the installs, which most of the time they do it logged in as administrator, which is why we cannot install to a users documents directory.

Our add-ins are not version specific, or at least we try to keep them from being version specific, and since the C++ interface is through COM, our dlls can load in any version. Some features cannot be used in older versions, such as the new Model States options, but we try to keep that code isolated so that it wont try to run in versions that it is not supported in. We can create the directories as you described, but how far do we go, 25,26,27,28,45? We will investigate this option as we move forward.

[Maxim-CADman77]

I wonder If it possible to reanimate such an Add-In without its source code (several users ask me about one addin stopped about 10 years ago ... I believe due to the death of its author)?

[Michael.Navara]

It s 50/50. If you can share the binaries of the add-in.

You can send me a link to the private message, if you don't want to upload the binaries here.