Get Microsoft Visual Studio (Community Edition is free with lesser debugging tools, Pro is better with way too many debugging tools! Enterprise is flat out overkill for a single user.)
Terms:
Application = .EXE
User Control Library = .DLL
External program has 2 paths:
1. Application plug in - you create the code and save it as a DLL. The code is formatted per the 'my first plug-in' tutorial in such a way then when placed where Inventor is looking, it will know what to do with it and load it as one of its normal plug ins.
2. Stand alone application - you create the code and save it as an EXE. The code has its own entry point, and uses invApp = Marshal.GetActiveObject("Inventor.Application") to hook into an active Inventor and begin to do work with it.
The plug in (1) is well scripted for you to begin, but may introduce issues getting it to work with the appropriate version of Inventor. (I recommend the Microsoft - WPF User Control Library, or the Inventor Application Plug-In template that gets installed with the Inventor SDK)
The stand alone (2) requires you to learn to create an application (I recommend using the Microsoft - WPF Application for VB.Net template in Visual Studio).
Besides WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation found in the System.Windows.Controls namespace), you can also use Windows Forms Application/User Control Library to rely on the older Windows Forms controls you may be more familiar with from VBA.
WPF is newer, and has many more features, but requires the learning curve from hell! Ok not that bad, but uses XAML (a type of XML that when written creates the VB.Net code page automatically in a hidden file *.g.vb) front end (define your controls) with the VB.Net (or C#.Net) back end (define what your controls do). I used a book Pro WPF in VB 2010 - MacDonald to learn it 9 years ago. It is much easier to use once you get the hang of it, just kind of hard to get the hang of (from a straight VBA point of view) due to its method of passing data around being a new thing; read about MVVM Model View - View Model structure (but don't get lost in it, its not that big of a deal).
Now the down side. You want to use the WPF DataGrid or WF DataGridView. The default data grid is fully functional pretty awesome free-bee, and totally basic compare to today's awesome program standards. You may find yourself expanding that datagrid's features to the point where you could 'invest' in another data grid (Telerik for one). 3rd Party DataGrids may have many features you are looking for, but you don't necessarily get control over what they do in the background code. Personally I created a custom control that inherits the standard datagrid, and adds sort/filtering controls that make it function much like the MS Access DataGrid control (which is way enhanced when you really look at it).
jvj
