Tag Archives: Add-ons

Customize Autodesk Inventor API using C#

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In continuation of previous post on Introduction to Inventor API and Customization, this blog post will show some insights on how to customize Inventor API using Visual C# and Visual Studio 2005.

It is assumed that you have installed Autodesk Inventor (Version 10 or above) and Visual Studio 2005. As per the discussion over Inventor Customization forum, it is suggested that you have Visual Studio 2003 or 2005 for the Inventor Addin Template to work properly. At present, Addin Template does not get installed in Visual Studio 2008.

To get started with Visual C# and Visual Studio IDE (Integrated Development Environment), watch the following Videos from MSDN Library.

  1. Introduction to Visual C# 2008 Express Edition. Though we would be using Visual Studio 2005 for our development purpose, Visual C# Express Edition has similar functionality as Visual Studio. In this video, basic understanding of how an IDE works could be gained and also how C# programs and projects are developed and built.
  2. Introduction to C# Programming Language. This video shows how to develop C# applications using Visual Studio 2005. It is highly recommended that you download this package installer and upon installation on your system, you have a copy of Video downloaded and also a MS Word Document which is basically a transcript for the Video and also explains Basics of C# in a very good way.

I hope you also have downloaded DevTv: Introduction to Inventor Programming from Inventor Customization Page. In this video, Mr. Wayne Brill of Autodesk has explained API concepts very well, but they are either in VB6 or VB.NET. I would like to highlight to the audience that even in Inventor Programmers Help (Located in Help tab), most of the code examples are given in VB.NET or VBA.

I would try to bridge the gap by giving out equivalent C# code in the blog posts to follow. You may also be interested to check out a free VB.Net to VC# translator I stumbled upon, though I haven’t used it yet.

Glad am back to CAD World.. Crossroads of my Career

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Update: IN-Motion, a Motion and Dynamic Simulation Addin for Autodesk Inventor has been launched by us.

Crossroads in Career Its been quite some time since I blogged. I was pretty much occupied with the Confusion I had in my mind, as I had hit a Cross-Roads of my career. After quitting my job at HeroHonda R&D, I teamed up with my mentor, Aik-Siong Koh in US and we started off with AR-CAD in April 2007. Since he is an expert at CAD (Motion Simulation) and he had used Smalltalk to develop freeCAD, I also had to learn Smalltalk to help him in further development. Our initial plan was to develop Motion Add-ons/Add-ins or Plug-ins for various CAD software such as Autodesk Inventor, SolidWorks, Rhino CAD and others. Somehow in the due course, we thought of exploring Web 2.0 using Seaside, which is a web framework built on Smalltalk. The idea was that I could learn Smalltalk and also explore Web 2.0 as we had plans for integration of Web and CAD.

We started developing Caartz using Seaside. It took us a long time to get it out. During this period, I learnt Smalltalk, Seaside, OOP, Basic Linux Setup and Usage, various Web related configurations such as Apache, load-balancing etc. When Caartz was launched, it was just a lot of things we had learnt and we had no plans to make money out of it. Since I had gathered experience in Web domain, I completely forgot that I had to return to CAD to make Motion Add-ons.

Then I helped a friend to develop a couple of websites and took a Web Developer Job in a Bangalore based Services Startup. Though the work there involved me in whole life cycle of a project and was very challenging, I thought I was missing something there. Being a Mechanical Engineer from a reputed Engineering College with a lot of interest in CAD, I had a feeling that I was not doing what I was supposed to do. After a couple of months in that Web Startup, I quit it and again I have teamed up with my mentor in US to develop CAD Add-ons.

This time, we are very serious about our path we are going to follow to become a very known name in Motion Simulation Domain. We have completely revamped AR-CAD website as the first step. My mentor already has Motion Simulation code in Smalltalk. I am learning VBA and .NET C# to develop an Add-in which talks to both Autodesk Inventor COM API and our Smalltalk code. As of today, I am able to make simple VBA Add-ons for Inventor and hopefully within next 6 months, we would be ready to sell our Motion Add-ons for Inventor. Once it is done, we would then develop Motion Add-ons for other CAD software.

Jist of my post is that I had come across a Crossroads a year ago and chose a road which took me to Web 2.0 domain. Somewhere down the line, I realized that I wasn’t enjoying it and came back to the crossroads and now I have chosen the road which takes me into CAD world and I am glad that I am finding it interesting and challenging.