Balloon Reporting Macro

There was a question on the Autodesk Inventor Customization newsgroup this morning that caught my interest.  The question was about creating a report, (in their case editing a column in the BOM), that lists all of the balloons in a drawing along with what sheet they’re on and the zone on the sheet they’re located within,

The macro below does this.  The output is simple since it just writes out the result as a file, but you’ll likely want to edit the program to do something else with the result like incorporate it into the BOM, create a custom table, or some other thing I would never have thought of.  The macro assumes that the border was created as a default border.  With a default border it’s a simple matter to get the number of zones on a sheet and determine whether to use numbers or characters for the zone labels.  If you’re using a border you’ve created then you’ll need to edit the program and specify this information.

I tested the macro using the Engine MKII sample assembly shown below.  The drawing that comes with that sample has three sheets and balloons on two of the sheets.

Here are the contents of the report created by the macro.

==== Balloon Report ====        Sheet: Sheet:1           Balloon: 8, (7, B)           Balloon: 7, (1, A)           Balloon: 11, (7, B)           Balloon: 12, (7, B)           Balloon: 23, (7, A)           Balloon: 19, (7, A)           Balloon: 28, (7, A)           Balloon: 26, (7, A)           Balloon: 18, (8, A)           Balloon: 20, (8, A)           Balloon: 110, (3, B)           Balloon: 81, (3, A)           Balloon: 112, (4, A)         Sheet: Sheet:2           Balloon: 18, (2, B)           Balloon: 19, (3, A)           Balloon: 9, (5, C)           Balloon: 1, (5, D)           Balloon: 3, (5, D)           Balloon: 8, (5, C)           Balloon: 5, (5, D)           Balloon: 7, (5, C)           Balloon: 6, (5, C)           Balloon: 4, (5, D)           Balloon: 31, (5, B)           Balloon: 29, (2, B)           Balloon: 30, (2, B)           Balloon: 28, (2, B)           Balloon: 24, (2, B)           Balloon: 27, (2, B)           Balloon: 25, (2, B)           Balloon: 26, (2, B)           Balloon: 12, (5, B)           Balloon: 11, (5, B)           Balloon: 10, (5, B)           Balloon: 16, (2, C)           Balloon: 18, (3, D)           Balloon: 17, (3, D)           Balloon: 14, (2, C)           Balloon: 13, (2, C)           Balloon: 9, (2, C)           Balloon: 15, (3, D)           Balloon: 20, (3, A)           Balloon: 23, (2, A)           Balloon: 22, (3, A)           Balloon: 21, (3, A)         Sheet: Sheet:3

Here’s the VBA macro.  To use it, just copy and paste the code below into a VBA code module, have a drawing open, and run it.  If you’re not familiar with VBA, instructions to do this are available here.

Public Sub BalloonReport()    ' Get the active drawing document.    Dim drawDoc As DrawingDocument    Set drawDoc = ThisApplication.ActiveDocument          ' Open a file to write the results into.    Dim filename As String    filename = "C:TempBalloonReport.txt"    Open filename For Output As #1          ' Print out the header for the report, both to the    ' output file and the immediate window in VBA.    Debug.Print ""    Debug.Print "==== Balloon Report ===="    Print #1, "==== Balloon Report ===="          ' Iterate through the sheets.    Dim drawSheet As sheet    For Each drawSheet In drawDoc.Sheets      ' Print out the sheet name.      Debug.Print "  Sheet: " & drawSheet.Name      Print #1, "  Sheet: " & drawSheet.Name            ' Determine the zones within this sheet.  This assumes that             ' the border was created as a standard border where the              ' zones are explicitly defined.  If this is a custom border              ' then some other mechanism will need to be created to      ' define the zones.      Dim border As DefaultBorder      Set border = drawSheet.border      Dim XZoneWidth As Double      Dim YZoneWidth As Double      XZoneWidth = drawSheet.Width / border.HorizontalZoneCount      YZoneWidth = drawSheet.Height / border.VerticalZoneCount      Dim XZoneIsNumber As Boolean      If border.HorizontalZoneLabelMode = kBorderLabelModeNumeric Then          XZoneIsNumber = True      Else          XZoneIsNumber = False      End If            Dim YZoneIsNumber As Boolean      If border.VerticalZoneLabelMode = kBorderLabelModeNumeric Then        YZoneIsNumber = True      Else        YZoneIsNumber = False      End If            ' Iterate through the balloons on this sheet.      Dim drawBalloon As Balloon      For Each drawBalloon In drawSheet.Balloons        ' Because the border is numbered in the X direction from        ' right to left and the sh
eet coordinate system is from        ' left to right, this reverses the X coordinate so the        ' zone computation will be correct.        Dim newXPosition As Double        newXPosition = drawSheet.Width - drawBalloon.position.X              ' Determine the X zone.        Dim XZone As Integer        XZone = Int(newXPosition / XZoneWidth)              ' Get the X zone as a string.        Dim XZoneValue As String              If XZoneIsNumber Then          XZoneValue = XZone + 1        Else          XZoneValue = Chr(XZone + 65)        End If              ' Determine Y zone.        Dim YZone As Integer        YZone = Int(drawBalloon.position.Y / YZoneWidth)              ' Get the Y zone as a string.        Dim YZoneValue As String        If YZoneIsNumber Then          YZoneValue = YZone + 1        Else          YZoneValue = Chr(YZone + 65)        End If              ' Iterate through each value set associated with this balloon.        Dim valueSet As BalloonValueSet        For Each valueSet In drawBalloon.BalloonValueSets          ' Print out the results for this value set.          Debug.Print "    Balloon: " & valueSet.value & _                      ", (" & XZoneValue & ", " & YZoneValue & ")"          Print #1, "    Balloon: " & valueSet.value & _                    ", (" & XZoneValue & ", " & YZoneValue & ")"        Next      Next    Next          ' Close the output file.    Close #1          MsgBox "Report written to: """ & filename & """"       End Sub