ETO 2013 R2 – Add-In template, VS Add-Ins can impact ETO Studio & InventorApplication global rule

Here are a couple of things about ETO 2013 R2 that I have found recently. 

1. If you have used the Inventor ETO Add-In template you may find that the ribbon tab for the Add-In does not display properly when Inventor is launched through ETO Studio. When Intent is started from Visual Studio, it does extensive processing in its OnReady handler. It reads command-line arguments and they tell it to load or create a model and establish communications with VS. Because of this the event handlers in the Add-In can be called later compared to when they are called when Inventor is started normally. 

To avoid this behavior you can call the code that creates the ribbon in the IntentInitialized function. Here is a slightly modified version of the Add-In code. (In IntentModel.cs) This change fixed the problem in one case. (Keep in mind that the the Add-In template should be considered as a starting point).

// This will be called if and when Intent 
//gets initialized by the host.
void IntentInitialized
    (IntentAPI intentAPI, object hostAPI)
{
 // Set up model event handlers if desired.
    IHostAPI host = (IHostAPI)hostAPI;
    ModelEvents ModelEvent =
                    intentAPI.ModelEvents;
 
    host.Events.BeforeModelLoad +=
        new EventHandler(Events_BeforeModelLoad);
    ModelEvent.BeforeRender +=
        new EventHandler
                       (ModelEvent_BeforeRender);
    ModelEvent.AfterRender +=
        new EventHandler
                       (ModelEvent_AfterRender);
 
    // Added to resolve problem with AddIn 
    // ribbon when debugging
    if (intentAPI.Models.Count > 0)
    {
        m_gui.Activate();
    }
}

1. We have found in one case that ETO Studio is adversely effected by the Visual Studio Add-In named ReSharper. Some of the symptoms are the following:

Error Message when opening the ETO Studio project: “The parameter is incorrect”.

Edit Rule Error – “Design for selected part not loaded in Visual Studio Environment. Please make sure the project containing the design is open”

ETO Model browser sees the designs under root, but cannot open them. Clicking “Edit Design” gives the same error as above.

Design Navigator shows no User Designs

 

The behavior has been reported to Autodesk ETO engineering. For now the suggestion is to disable the Visual Studio Add-In.

1. There is now an InventorApplication global Rule. Before that, you had to use hidden %%InventorApplication. Here you see the ETO Console in Visual Studio using the Inventor API:

-Wayne