Hi there,
Some time ago I started writing an add-in for Autodesk Inventor. That software exposes an API that allow to develop add-ins in C#/.NET. In this post I am not going to write anything specific about the project; it will neither be an insight into API specifics. I just want to give quick explanation about controlling events with use of EventTimigEnum.
Some actions in Inventor can take a bit of a while – for instance placing big component into an assembly. Therefore, it is possible to decide when custom action is performed – either before or after an event is completed.
Let’s start this demo with writing a method that will be executed when a new component is placed into an assembly:
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private void CustomAction(_AssemblyDocument DocumentObject, ComponentOccurrence Occurrence, EventTimingEnum BeforeOrAfter, NameValueMap Context, out HandlingCodeEnum HandlingCode) { MessageBox.Show("event fired!"); HandlingCode = HandlingCodeEnum.kEventHandled; } |
Just a brief explanation to the code above: of course only a method with matching signature can be assigned to an event, and it is necessary to set value of HandlingCodeEnum output parameter.
Now, to attach that method to an event that fires whenever a new component is inserted to assembly you need to access Inventor instance. In this example it will be done in add-in Activate method.
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m_inventorApplication.AssemblyEvents.OnNewOccurrence += CustomAction; |
Once that is done we can start Inventor and see what’s the result:
As you have probably noticed our CustomAction was executed twice. Sometimes this behaviour is desired, sometimes it’s not. Now, let’s modify our method to perform action only after the event is completed. To do that we need to check value of EventTimingEnum parameter and perform action whenever its value is what we desire.
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private void CustomAction(_AssemblyDocument DocumentObject, ComponentOccurrence Occurrence, EventTimingEnum BeforeOrAfter, NameValueMap Context, out HandlingCodeEnum HandlingCode) { if(BeforeOrAfter == EventTimingEnum.kAfter) { MessageBox.Show("event fired!"); HandlingCode = HandlingCodeEnum.kEventHandled; } HandlingCode = HandlingCodeEnum.kEventNotHandled; } |
Now, the message box will be displayed only after the event is completed. EventTimingEnum can have one of three possible values: kAfter, kBefore (which are self explanatory) and kAbort. The last value can be used in case we want to perform an action when an event is cancelled – for instance, when opening an assembly with lost reference user can decide to cancel opening.
It is also important to mention that not all events in Inventor are fired both kBefore and kAfter. Most of them are but you need to be aware that there are exceptions from that rule.
So that’s it if it comes to EventTimingEnum.
Unfortunately, there is not much about writing Inventor add-ins in .NET. What I recommend to check is first and foremost this GitHub repository:
https://github.com/ADN-DevTech/Inventor-Training-Material
It is complete course on Inventor API. There are presentations and code examples (in VB.NET and C#) for each chapter.
The other thing is class diagram delivered by Autodesk which comes with Inventor SDK installation. It can be found in Autodesk/Inventor/SDK/DeveloperTools/Docs in PublicDocuments on your C drive.
Regards, Michal