Changing Drawing Curves to Match Assembly Color

I had a couple of requests lately asking about the possibility of using the API to change the colors of the curves in a drawing view to match the color of the parts in the assembly.  Below is a program that does this.  It starts with a selected drawing view and gets the associated assembly.  It then iterates over every occurrence in the assembly and for each part occurrence gets the color of that part as it exists in the assembly.  If the color has been overridden in the assembly then it will use the override color.  It then checks to see if there is a layer in the drawing that has the same name as the color.  If there isn’t it creates a new layer with the same color.  It then gets all of the curves in the drawing that are associated with that occurrence and assigns the layer to those curves.  The picture below shows the result after running it on the engine sample that’s delivered with Inventor.

Here’s the VBA code that does the work.  A key API functions that the program uses is the DrawingView.DrawingCurves property, which given an occurrence returns all of the curves in the view that are associated with that occurrence.  It also uses the Sheet.ChangeLayer method which is a new method in Inventor 2011 that changes the layer of a group of objects.  The program could be written without this, but would be much slower since it will need to change the layer of each curve one at a time.

Public Sub ChangeLayerOfOccurrenceCurves()
   ' Get the active drawing document.
   Dim drawDoc As DrawingDocument
   Set drawDoc = ThisApplication.ActiveDocument

   ' Have the user select a drawing view.
   Dim drawView As DrawingView
   Set drawView = ThisApplication.CommandManager.Pick( _
                  kDrawingViewFilter, "Select a drawing view.") 

   Dim docDesc As DocumentDescriptor
   Set docDesc = drawView.ReferencedDocumentDescriptor 

   ' Verify that the selected drawing view is of an assembly.
   If docDesc.ReferencedDocumentType <> kAssemblyDocumentObject Then
      MsgBox "The selected view must be of an assembly."
      Exit Sub
   End If 

   ' Get the component definition for the assembly.
   Dim asmDef As AssemblyComponentDefinition
   Set asmDef = docDesc.ReferencedDocument.ComponentDefinition 

   ' Process the occurrences, wrapping it in a transaction so the
   ' entire process can be undone with a single undo operation.
   Dim trans As Transaction
   Set trans = ThisApplication.TransactionManager.StartTransaction( _
                               drawDoc, "Change drawing view color") 

   ' Call the recursive function that does all the work.
   Call ProcessAssemblyColor(drawView, asmDef.Occurrences)
   trans.End
End Sub



Private Sub ProcessAssemblyColor(drawView As DrawingView, _
                                 Occurrences As ComponentOccurrences)
   ' Iterate through the current collection of occurrences.
   Dim occ As ComponentOccurrence
   For Each occ In Occurrences
      ' Check to see if this occurrence is a part or assembly.
      If occ.DefinitionDocumentType = kPartDocumentObject Then
         ' ** It's a part so process the color. 

         ' Get the render style of the occurrence.
         Dim color As RenderStyle
         Dim sourceType As StyleSourceTypeEnum
         Set color = occ.GetRenderStyle(sourceType) 

         ' Get the TransientsObjects object to use later.
         Dim transObjs As TransientObjects
         Set transObjs = ThisApplication.TransientObjects 

         ' Verify that a layer exists for this color.
         Dim layers As LayersEnumerator
         Set layers = drawView.Parent.Parent.StylesManager.layers 

         Dim drawDoc As DrawingDocument
         Set drawDoc = drawView.Parent.Parent 

         On Error Resume Next
         Dim colorLayer As Layer
         Set colorLayer = layers.Item(color.Name) 

         If Err.Number <> 0 Then
            On Error GoTo 0
            ' Get the diffuse color for the render style.
            Dim red As Byte
            Dim green As Byte
            Dim blue As Byte 

            ' Create a color object that is the diffuse color.
            Call color.GetDiffuseColor(red, green, blue)
            Dim newColor As color
            Set newColor = transObjs.CreateColor(red, green, blue) 

            ' Copy an arbitrary layer giving it the name
            ' of the render style.
            Set colorLayer = layers.Item(1).Copy(color.Name)

            ' Set the attributes of the layer to use the color,
            ' have a solid line type, and a specific width.
            colorLayer.color = newColor
            colorLayer.LineType = kContinuousLineType
            colorLayer.LineWeight = 0.02
         End If
         On Error GoTo 0 

         ' Get all of the curves associated with this occurrence.
         On Error Resume Next
         Dim drawcurves As DrawingCurvesEnumerator
         Set drawcurves = drawView.DrawingCurves(occ)
         If Err.Number = 0 Then
            On Error GoTo 0 

            ' Create an empty collection.
            Dim objColl As ObjectCollection
            Set objColl = transObjs.CreateObjectCollection() 

            ' Add the curve segments to the collection.
            Dim drawCurve As DrawingCurve
            For Each drawCurve In drawcurves
               Dim segment As DrawingCurveSegment
               For Each segment In drawCurve.Segments
                  objColl.Add segment
               Next
            Next 

            ' Change the layer of all of the segments.
            Call drawView.Parent.ChangeLayer(objColl, colorLayer)
         End If
         On Error GoTo 0
      Else
         ' It's an assembly so process its contents.
         Call ProcessAssemblyColor(drawView, occ.SubOccurrences)
      End If
   Next
End Sub

This sample program sets the color of each occurrence based on its color in the assembly. You could choose to set the color based on any other criteria instead. It can be anything associated with the part. you just have to choose what attribute of the part to use and what the associated set of colors are that cam be assigned to each part. For example, you might have a custom iProperty that controls what color is assigned to each part in the drawing.

Comments

[here]

It's easier to get a good finish if you keep your basic shapes simple.

[Andre]

Using the macro I got an error

"Method 'GetRenderStyle' of object 'ComponentOccurence' failed"

[Anders Petersen]

Hi
This code solve some of my problem then exporting to dwg, but it seems to change alle the lines and put them in the same layer and therefore they lose there linetypes(contintues, hidden ect.) is it possible to keep the linetype and stil change the colour?

[R. van de Burgt]

This code is great and we welcome'd it in our company. We used to do this work manually in Autocad...
Altough the code works fine, vba gives an error:

Run-time error '-2147467259 (80004005)'
"Method 'GetRenderStyle' of object 'ComponentOccurence' failed"

Did I miss something here? (we use inventor pro 2011)