Inventor Virtual Component: Assign Base Quantity to the Parameter

by Vladimir Ananyev

Each new virtual component by default has Base Quantity settings as shown below.

How can I assign the base quantity to some parameter?  BOMQuantity.SetBaseQuantity method could do all this work for us.

Let’s say we have the virtual component “Paint:1” and the user parameter “Paint_Mass”:

The following code sample illustrates the workflow:

Sub SetQuantity()

    Dim oDoc As AssemblyDocument
    Set oDoc = ThisApplication.ActiveDocument

    Dim oDef As AssemblyComponentDefinition
    Set oDef = oDoc.ComponentDefinition

    ‘reference to the user parameter where mass value is stored

    Dim oPar As Inventor.UserParameter

    Set oPar = oDef.Parameters.UserParameters.Item("Paint_Mass")

    ‘get the reference to the virtual component by its name

    Dim oOcc As ComponentOccurrence

    Set oOcc = oDef.Occurrences.ItemByName("Paint:1")

    ‘virtual component definition

    Dim oVirtualDef As VirtualComponentDefinition

    Set oVirtualDef = oOcc.Definition

    ‘Assign the base quantity to the parameter oPar

    ‘Limitation: this works for length, volume, and mass units only.

    Dim oBOMQuantity As BOMQuantity

    Set oBOMQuantity = oVirtualDef.BOMQuantity

    Call oBOMQuantity.SetBaseQuantity( _ 
       BOMQuantityTypeEnum.kParameterBOMQuantity, oPar)

End Sub

If you check base quantity after this subroutine is completed you will see this: