Hide first element of a circular pattern feature of a boundary patch

By Xiaodong Liang

The question is to to hide the first element of a circular pattern feature of a boundary patch using the API.  The first element is the original boundary patch. There are two ways to hide it:

way1:

BoundaryPatchFeature.SurfaceBody.Visible = False

way2:

BoundaryPatchFeature.SurfaceBody.Parent.Visible = False

with way1, before Inventor 2012, the first element is hidden
but if the file is closed and re-opened the first element is visible again. So we have to use way2.

Following is the code demo.

Sub test()             Dim inventorAppType As Type =            System.Type.GetTypeFromProgID("Inventor.Application")        InvApp =            System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal.            GetActiveObject("Inventor.Application")             Dim oDoc As PartDocument        oDoc = InvApp.ActiveDocument             Dim oBoundPatchFeature As BoundaryPatchFeature        oBoundPatchFeature =            oDoc.ComponentDefinition.Features.            CircularPatternFeatures(1).ParentFeatures(1)             ' way 1:        ' before Inventor 2012, The first element is hidden        ' but if the file is closed and re-opened the first        ' element is visible.             'oBoundPatchFeature.SurfaceBody.Visible = False             'way 2:         Dim oWorkSurface As WorkSurface =            oBoundPatchFeature.SurfaceBody.Parent        oWorkSurface.Visible = False         End Sub