Mod the Machine

Level Of Details in next Inventor release

As Garin mentioned in this post, one of the new features the team has been working on is Model States.

This might have an effect on some of the Level Of Details related functions, events, and properties in the API.

If you are using any of those, the best thing to do is join the beta program where you can find more details about this functionality and can also use pre-release versions (alphas and betas) of Inventor to test your add-in.

Get object type when using "Embed Interop Types" False

There is a blog post on why it's better to have Embed Interop Types of the autodesk.inventor.interop assembly set to False

However, in this case some properties might not show up when typing your code, but they can still be accessed if you are using late binding - in case of C# you can do that by declaring a variable as dynamic

Also, GetType() will not provide the exact com type, but just a generic __ComObject

Having the Type property should be enough to identify the type of the object, but if you really need the actual COM name of it, then you can use the Microsoft.VisualBasic assembly for that.

Fusion 360 Affiliate Program

Are you a huge fan of Autodesk Fusion 360? Do you have a robust community or following that trusts your opinion on software (and other things)? The Fusion 360 Marketing Team has a lucrative proposal for you: join our affiliate program!

Affiliate marketing is a process by which an affiliate earns a commission for selling another company’s products. At Autodesk, potential affiliates apply to our program and, once approved, are given unique links and visuals to use when mentioning our products on their channels. Members receive a commission on every verified sale made through their unique link.

What’s in it for me?

The team at Fusion 360 is looking for passionate community members with a following that would respect their opinion on design and manufacturing software solutions. We think such valuable voices deserve compensation for any sales they help make happen, so we offer a starting commission of 7% on verified digital sales.

The Fusion 360 team is really excited to launch a program that recognizes and rewards our community members in everyone’s favorite way: cash! If you’re interested, please reach out to the Fusion 360 social media manager at [email protected], or simply DM us on social media to get in touch.

-Muna Idriss

3rd party libraries used by Inventor 2023

Here is a list of the various 3rd parties libraries and their versions that Inventor 2023 is using - i.e. they are used by the core product, and some of them are also used by certain add-ins.

If you are using any of them from your add-in then the best is to make sure you are using the same version to avoid version conflict:

Component Name	Version
DevExpress	21.1.5
7z	18.06.0.0
CEFSharp	91.1.230
SQLite	3.30.1
Qt	5.150.40
QtMFCBridge	5150.280.1
TBB	6.1.30
NLog	4.7.10

 

Import Data Exchange model

There is a new feature called Data Exchange that also has an API now available in public beta - see Data Exchange Released! Forge Data Exchange APIs now available in Public Beta

Through the user interface you can import such models in Inventor and you can also automate that process using the Inventor API.

For testing purposes, the easiest thing is to find a previously created Data Exchange model in your Autodesk Construction Cloud account, check its id available under entityId in the URL, and assign that in the below code to the sUrn variable.

Sub ImportDataExchangeComponentSample()
    Dim oDoc As AssemblyDocument
    Set oDoc = ThisApplication.ActiveDocument
    
    Dim sFdx As String
    sFdx = "https://developer.api.autodesk.com/exchange/v1/exchanges"
    
    Dim sUrn As String
    sUrn = "urn:adsk.wipprod:dm.lineage:sTpS6wv0ROS_QQglZOXReQ"
    
    Dim sUrl As String
    sUrl = sFdx + "?filters=attribute.exchangeFileUrn==" + sUrn
    
    Dim oDEDef As ImportedDataExchangeComponentDefinition
    Set oDEDef = oDoc.ComponentDefinition.ImportedComponents.CreateDataExchangeDefinition(sUrl)
    
    Dim oDEComp As ImportedDataExchangeComponent
    Set oDEComp = oDoc.ComponentDefinition.ImportedComponents.Add(oDEDef)
End Sub

 

-Adam

Important info if your add-in uses pyc files

Fusion 360 is migrating to a newer engine of Python and it will make your add-in fail if it's relying on compiled Python files (*.pyc)

For more info see https://help.autodesk.com/view/fusion360/ENU/?guid=GUID-36B1FFB5-5291-4532-8F11-90E912769B34  

-Adam

Migrate Inventor templates

There is a difference between using a document as a template or just simply opening it. Especially in the case of drawing templates.

Inventor can open older documents created in previous versions of the software and then save them. That's what document migration is: opening an old document and saving it in the latest version of the software. You can find more information about it here.

Inventor documents have a property called NeedsMigrating, but it only tells you if the document needs to be saved before modifying its content. It does not say if it can be used as a template or not.

Just to be on the safe side, the best thing is to migrate an older document before trying to use it as a template - especially a drawing template. 

You can do all this in advance e.g. using Task Scheduler, or just-in-time as well - here's how.

You can check programmatically the Inventor version the drawing was last saved in. If it has not been migrated yet then you can just open, save and close it before using it as a template.

Here is a VBA sample:

Sub UseTemplate()
  Const templatePath = "C:\Temp\Template2021\Standard.idw"

  Dim templateVersion As SoftwareVersion
  Set templateVersion = ThisApplication.FileManager.SoftwareVersionSaved(templatePath)

  Dim inventorVersion As SoftwareVersion
  Set inventorVersion = ThisApplication.SoftwareVersion

  If inventorVersion.Major > templateVersion.Major Then
    ' Migrate drawing template before using it
    Dim t As DrawingDocument
    Set t = ThisApplication.Documents.Open(templatePath, False)

    t.Save

    t.Close
  End If

  Dim doc As Document
  Set doc = ThisApplication.Documents.Add(kDrawingDocumentObject, templatePath, True)
End Sub

3rd party libraries used by Inventor 2022

Here is a list of the various 3rd parties libraries and their versions that Inventor 2022 is using - i.e. they are used by the core product, and some of them are also used by certain add-ins.

If you are using any of them from your add-in then the best is to make sure you are using the same version to avoid version conflict:

Component Name	Version
DevExpress	19.1.5
7z	18.06.0.0
CEFSharp	75.1.141
SQLite	3.30.1
Qt	5.150.10
QtMFCBridge	5150.280.1
TBB	6.1.20

 

Tooltip text gets cropped

If you are using very long strings without tabs or spaces in them (e.g. a long file path), those will get cropped.
E.g. the file path "C:\\top_folder\\sub_folder\\sub_sub_folder\\sub_sub_sub_folder\\sub_sub_sub_sub_folder\\somefile.txt" will show up like this:

Currently, that will also add an empty area on the right side of the tooltip, but that will be fixed.

There are two things you can do:
- add zero-width space characters (\u200b) wherever you are ok with the string being broken into a new line (e.g. after each \ character in the file path)
- add an ellipsis character (\u2026) at the point where the rest of the information is not important
(the tooltip width is 300 pixels which would allow about 40-50 characters in a line) 

-Adam

Export driven joint values

In certain workflows, it can come handy to get the values of joints at multiple states of the model.
This way you can use those values downstream to drive (or at least help set up) a real-life model.

In the user interface, you can drag components to drive the movement of the model, or use e.g. Motion Study

We can do the same using the API as well. As we keep driving the model, we can check how the change affects the various joints and record their values.
Then we can save the values in a CSV file which then could be opened in Excel or a similar spreadsheet editor.

The code is made for this specific model but could easily be modified for others. It expects a list of components and a list of joints inside them that you want to monitor. In the case of both lists, you can specify the name that should be used in the CSV file.

After specifying where you want the CSV file to be saved, you can also provide the distance the main joint should be moved. 

The source code is here:
https://github.com/adamenagy/JointValueExporter/blob/main/JointValueExporter.py 

-Adam

Log debug messages in Fusion 360

The usual way to debug your Python add-in is to start it from Visual Studio Code, and use print() to write messages to the Debug Console:

However, sometimes you might just want some insight into what's going on inside your add-in without starting a debugging session.

One obvious way is to write information into a log file. Depending on your needs that might be the thing to do.

That will not provide real-time information though: you have to open the file in order to see what was written into it.

Another option is to write to the "Text Commands" palette of Fusion 360. If you don't mind a bit of delay for the messages to appear then just call writeText() function of the palette, otherwise also call adsk.doEvents()

You could create a couple of simple classes to implement what's needed:

class UiLogger:
    def __init__(self, forceUpdate):  
        app = adsk.core.Application.get()
        ui  = app.userInterface
        palettes = ui.palettes
        self.textPalette = palettes.itemById("TextCommands")
        self.forceUpdate = forceUpdate
        self.textPalette.isVisible = True 
    
    def print(self, text):       
        self.textPalette.writeText(text)
        if (self.forceUpdate):
            adsk.doEvents() 

class FileLogger:
    def __init__(self, filePath): 
        try:
            open(filePath, 'a').close()
        
            self.filePath = filePath
        except:
            raise Exception("Could not open/create file = " + filePath)

    def print(self, text):
        with open(self.filePath, 'a') as txtFile:
            txtFile.writelines(text + '\r\n')

Then you can create an instance of either of them and start logging messages. E.g. using the UiLogger:

logger = UiLogger(True)
# ...
logger.print("Some message")

Or use the FileLogger

logger = FileLogger("/Users/nagyad/Documents/log.txt")
# ...
logger.print("Some message")

That palette is not only for writing messages but can also be used to run Python scripts - see Run commands from the "Text Commands" panel