Open Drawing from a Part or Assembly

Inventor supports the “Open Drawing” command that you can access from the context menu when clicking on a part or assembly node in the browser.

The equivalent functionality is not available through the Inventor API. However, the logic behind the command is very simple and not difficult to do on your own using Inventor’s API and features built into your programming language. A part or assembly doesn’t know if there are any drawings referencing it so the command just takes the filename of the part or assembly and looks for a file within the project of the same name as the part or assembly but with a .idw or .dwg extension.

Below is a VBA Sub that passes in the active part or assembly document to a function that either returns the full filename to the found drawing or an empty string if it can’t find a drawing.

Public Sub FindDrawingTest()          Dim partDoc As PartDocument           Set partDoc = ThisApplication.ActiveDocument           ' Call the function to get the drawing.      Dim drawingFilename As String           drawingFilename = FindDrawingFile(partDoc)               ' Display the result.           If drawingFilename  "" Then               MsgBox "The drawing for """ & partDoc.fullFilename & """ was found: " & vbCr & drawingFilename           Else               MsgBox "No drawing was found for """ & partDoc.fullFilename & """"           End If       End Sub                  ' Find the drawing for the specified part of assembly.          Private Function FindDrawingFile(PartOrAssemblyDoc As Document)           Dim fullFilename As String           fullFilename = PartOrAssemblyDoc.fullFilename               ' Extract the path from the full filename.           Dim path As String           path = Left$(fullFilename, InStrRev(fullFilename, ""))               ' Extract the filename from the full filename.           Dim filename As String           filename = Right$(fullFilename, Len(fullFilename) - InStrRev(fullFilename, ""))               ' Replace the extension with "dwg"           filename = Left$(filename, InStrRev(filename, ".")) & "dwg"               ' Find if the drawing exists.           Dim drawingFilename As String           drawingFilename = ThisApplication.DesignProjectManager.ResolveFile(path, filename)               ' Check the result.           If drawingFilename = "" Then               ' Try again with idw extension.               filename = Left$(filename, InStrRev(filename, ".")) & "idw"                       ' Find if the drawing exists.               drawingFilename = ThisApplication.DesignProjectManager.ResolveFile(path, filename)                   ' Return the result.                 If drawingFilename  "" Then                   FindDrawingFile = drawingFilename               Else                   FindDrawingFile = ""               End If           Else               ' Return the result.               FindDrawingFile = drawingFilename           End If       End Function

And here’s the same thing implemented in Visual Basic .NET

Private Sub btnFindDrawing_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles btnFindDrawing.Click          Dim invApp As Inventor.Application = GetObject(, "Inventor.Application")           Dim partDoc As Inventor.PartDocument = invApp.ActiveDocument                 '  Call the function to get the drawing.          Dim drawingFilename As String = FindDrawingFile(partDoc)               ' Display the result.           If drawingFilename  "" Then               MsgBox("The drawing for """ & partDoc.FullFileName & """ was found: " & vbCr & drawingFilename)           Else               MsgBox("No drawing was found for """ & partDoc.FullFileName & """")           End If       End Sub                   ' Find the drawing for the specified part of assembly.       Private Function FindDrawingFile(PartOrAssemblyDoc As Inventor.Document)           Dim fullFilename As String = PartOrAssemblyDoc.FullFileName                ' Extract the path from the full filename.           Dim path As String = System.IO.Path.GetFullPath(fullFilename)                ' Extract the filename from the full filename.           Dim filename As String = System.IO.Path.GetFileNameWithoutExtension(fullFilename)          Dim invApp As Inventor.Application = PartOrAssemblyDoc.Parent                ' Find if the dwg exists.
    Dim drawingFilename As String           drawingFilename = invApp.DesignProjectManager.ResolveFile(path, filename & ".dwg")                ' Check the result.           If drawingFilename = "" Then               ' Try again with idw extension.               drawingFilename = invApp.DesignProjectManager.ResolveFile(path, filename & ".idw")                    ' Return the result.               If drawingFilename  "" Then                   Return drawingFilename               Else                   Return ""               End If           Else               ' Return the result.               Return drawingFilename           End If       End Function

-Brian