SolidWorks API Series 1

Programming & Automation

Written by Luke Malpass

AngelSix.com

Published by AngelSix

2011 Luke Malpass [email protected]

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any
information storage or retrieval system, without prior written
permission of the publisher.
Published by AngelSix AngelSix.com

Second Edition
Trademark Information
SolidWorks and PDMWorks are registered
trademarks of SolidWorks Corporation.
Excel is a registered trademark of Microsoft
Corporation.
Other brand or product names are
trademarks or registered trademarks of their
respective holders.

Contributors
Throughout this project I have received many enthusiastic responses
and people contributing their own ideas and knowledge to areas of
this book. It has been a great experience and an eye opening one.
Their enthusiasm towards this project has been a key driving factor
in pushing me to do this. I just hope that I do not let any of them
down.

Introduction
When I was first introduced to computers at the tender age of 9, I
have always been intrigued how things worked. Not on a basic level
of being told that if you write this portion of code, this will happen,
but to know the reason for every line of code and its purpose. To
know the reason why X comes before Y, and to analyse it and find its
extremes, where it fails and to know its limitations.
It is this drive for deeper understanding that has pushed me in every
aspect of my life, to fully understand computers, electronics, people,
and ultimately the universe. Whenever I come across something I do
not understand, I take it upon myself to learn; learn through
observation, through trial-and-error, through others, through
experience. So far I would like to think I have succeeded in all that
which I set out to understand.
I have always had a unique way of thinking when it comes to
computers and logic; I find most people learn programming through
the process of finding a solution and remembering the answer, such
as knowing that COS(1) = 0.5403, yet they do not know that
.
Whereas I feel most people simply remember coding, I like to fully
understand it, to the point where I could tell you what would happen
with code before even compiling it; I often write 1000s lines of code
before even compiling and testing it, as I already have in my head the
architecture and theory of what is going to be output, and I simply
translate my thoughts into writing.
By writing this book I hope to pass on my understanding of
computers and programming to the next generation.

I would like to thank my parents for making me the person I am

today, for giving me my morals and personality, and the drive in life
that has lead me to this point.

This book will be my first, aimed at sharing with people my ways of

thinking and programming and hopefully to enlighten at least one
persons day. All feedback is greatly appreciated, please send
comments to [email protected].
This book presumes the reader has a basic understanding of
computer programming on some level, such as the knowledge of if,
else, for, while statements, conditional statements and general
computer skills, and is savvy with SolidWorks.
I have tried to give the best explanation of all code provided on its
purpose, and what the point of every line of code is. I hope you enjoy
reading this book as much as I have enjoyed writing it.

CD CONTENT (case-sensitive link):

http://www.angelsix.com/CODE/SW2008.zip

Table of Contents
The Basics .......................................................................11
Recording your first macro ................................ 12
Writing a macro from scratch ............................ 19
Connecting with Visual Studio Express ........................ 29
Download and Install Visual Studio Express ...... 30
Connect to SolidWorks in C#..............................31
Connect to SolidWorks in VB.Net ...................... 52
Starting SolidWorks Programming .............................. 59
Saving Drawing Sheets as DXF .......................... 60
Get Document Information ............................... 68
Displaying Document Information ..................... 77
Working with Selected Objects..................................... 89
Identifying Selected Objects ............................. 90
Mating Selected Objects ................................... 94
Setting Material of Selected Objects ................. 98
Manipulating Dimensions.................................101
Selecting Objects ............................................. 107
Setting a Selection Filter ..................................112
Property Manager Pages.............................................. 113
Deriving the base class .....................................114
Adding items to the Page ................................ 128
Responding to events ...................................... 144
Traversing ..................................................................... 153
Traversing through an Assembly ..................... 154
Traversing through a Component.................... 159
Displaying the results ...................................... 164
Playing with Components and Features ........... 171
Custom Property Manager ...........................................181
Acquiring a Custom Property Manager ........... 182
Adding Custom Properties .............................. 185
Deleting Custom Properties ............................ 188

Table of Contents
Check Custom Property Existence ...................190
Updating Custom Properties............................194
The ConfigSearcher program ..........................196
Working with Drawings ............................................... 207
Automatically create Drawing Sheet............... 208
Counting Views ................................................219
Printing Drawing Sheets .................................230
Add-ins ........................................................................ 249
The basics of an Add-in ....................................250
Removing Add-in entries ................................ 268

10

The Basics
Recording your first macro
Writing a macro from scratch

11

The Basics

Recording yours first macro

Lets get right into the SolidWorks API and use the Macro Record
function to get SolidWorks to create a working macro for us.
Start by opening SolidWorks, and before opening any file from the
menu select Tools->Macro->Record. Most of the actions you
perform will not be recorded by SolidWorks; its just to get started.
For now we are simply going to create a new part. Select File->New,
and then File->Save, and save the new empty part wherever you
want.
Thats it; now go to Tools>Macro->Stop. This will
instruct SolidWorks to stop
recording your actions, and
subsequently save the
newly created macro.
Save the macro where you
would like.
Now you are returned to SolidWorks like normal. In order to see, and
more importantly to edit and run the macro you just created, you
need to go to Tools->Macro->Edit... Then select the macro you just
saved. This will open up the Visual Basic for Applications
development environment, or for short the VBE.
The first thing you will see is a lot of code to the right, with a treeview panel to the left. If you are unfamiliar with the VBE, then just
press F1 within the VBE environment and take a look at the help
topics within there. Dont get too concerned with that right now, all

12

The Basics
you need to know is that the panel on the left is where you will find
your macros files and the properties, and the remaining space to the
right is where your currently selected files content from the left
panel is displayed.

Notice in this screenshot the tree-view to the left labelled Project

Macro1. This is the project explorer where all files related to the
macro you are editing are shown. For now there is only one file, the
module that SolidWorks created. And to the right, is that modules
content.

13

The Basics
Leave the VBE window open and go back to
SolidWorks. Close down all files and on the top file
menu, right-click and select Macro from the menu.
This will save us having to go through the Tools
menu all the time to access the Macro tools Run,
Edit, Record etc... You should now notice that the
Macros toolbar should
now be visible
somewhere on the
window.

Before we get into understanding and editing this macro, lets first
get this macro to run, check it is working, and to see exactly what it
does.
With no files open, click the Play button on the macro toolbar. This
will play the selected macro instantly. Select the macro you just
created to run it.
Your very first lesson about using the built-in recording functionality
of SolidWorks starts here. Trying to run this macro generates the
following error:
Run-time error 91:
Object variable or With block variable not set

If you click debug, it will take you to the coding in the macro and
highlight the error in yellow:

14

The Basics

OK, so we know this line is causing the error. Without getting too
involved for now, and to get you started, remove the lines so that
you end up with the code below:
Dim swApp As Object
Dim Part As Object
Sub main()
Set swApp = Application.SldWorks
Set Part = swApp.NewDocument("C:\Program
Files\SolidWorks\data\templates\Part.prtdot", 0, 0#, 0#)
Part.SaveAs2 "C:\Users\luke\Desktop\Part1.SLDPRT", 0, False, False
End Sub

Now, click the Save button in the VBE environment to save the
changes and run the macro again (by going back to SolidWorks and
clicking the Run button or by clicking the Run button from within the
VBE environment).
This time running the macro should create a new part and save it. If
you still get errors double-check your code. Remember all code from
this book is found of the accompanying CD.

15

The Basics
Understanding the code
Now we have a working macro that creates a new part and saves it to
a location. Lets now take a closer look at the code that did this and
understand it.
Firstly, let me explain how macros interact with SolidWorks; in
programming, assemblies can make themselves visible to other
programs running on the system. This is called COM-Visibility.
Basically this allows us to create an instance of the SolidWorks
program (new or currently running) and access any functions that it
makes visible to us. So, the first stage of any macro or program is to
get an instance of SolidWorks to work with. This is done on this line:
Set swApp = Application.SldWorks

But before we get to this line, you will notice that there are several
lines before this. Anything outside of the Sub Main() routine and not
inside another Sub or Function, is classed as a global variable.
Variables are things such as numbers, Booleans (true, false), arrays,
custom objects; this book presumes you have enough knowledge to
know about variables, functions and conditional statements, if not
search google, there are plenty of tutorials and resources available.
Dim swApp As Object
Dim Part As Object

16

The Basics
Dim is the name used in VBA to declare a variable, following that is
the variables name, then As, and then its type.
Above, the macro has declared two variables. Two variables of type
Object, which is a universal type that all other types come from;
these will be used in the main() routine.
Firstly, once the macro is run, it enters the main() routine after
declaring its global variables. The first line within the main function
is the line which creates a new instance of the SolidWorks program
through COM as we discussed previously:
Set swApp = Application.SldWorks

Now, the recorded macro then goes on to create a new document by

calling the SolidWorks function NewDocument. In order to be able
to find this newly created part after it is created, the NewDocument
function returns what is called a handle to the new document it
creates, so we can find it immediately. Any return value of a function
is set to the variable to its left, so in this case the variable Part is set
to the newly created document handle that is returned:
Set Part = swApp.NewDocument("C:\Program
Files\SolidWorks\data\templates\Part.prtdot", 0, 0#, 0#)

The first parameter to the NewDocument function is the template

location, the other 3 are for drawing documents only.

17

The Basics
Dont worry too much about the parameters until later; all will be
explained.
Finally, the macro calls a function of the newly created Part variable
called SaveAs2.
Part.SaveAs2 "C:\Users\luke\Desktop\Part1.SLDPRT", 0, False, False

The first thing you will notice about this call unlike the previous, is
that this one is calling a function from the Part variable, whereas the
previous was from the SolidWorks object itself (swApp). The second
is that even though we are calling a function still, there are no
parentheses. In VBA, if a function is called without ()s then it is not
returning a value. That is not to say that the function itself doesnt
return a value, just that we are not making any use of it on this call.
Again, the SaveAs2 function takes 4 parameters; this first is the
name and location of where to save the file. The other 3 I shall cover
later.
And that is it; you have just created your first SolidWorks Macro!

18

The Basics

Writing a macro from scratch

Now it is time to get deeper into the code, to understand every part
of the code, line by line. Lets begin.
This time, from SolidWorks, select New from the Macro Toolbar and
save the macro to your desired location. This will automatically open
the VBE environment for you to start coding, as well as add some
lines of code, and behind the scenes add references for you as well.
To truly start from scratch, delete the code from the main window.
As well as the code, SolidWorks added a reference to itself, so I am
going to explain how to add this yourself (something you will need to
do later using Visual Studio).
In the VBE, go to Tools->Reference... This will open up all references
to this macro. References are links to libraries that your macro is
going to use. When we create new instance of SolidWorks in our
code, or call functions such as NewDocument and SaveAs2, these
are functions from the SolidWorks library. In order for our macro to
know about these functions, we must reference the correct
SolidWorks libraries first.
Although already
checked, if they werent,
you would simply scroll
down the list and check
the SolidWorks Types,
Constants, Commands
and Extensibility
libraries to add them to
your project.

19

The Basics
With a fresh clean empty macro ready to work with, we will begin by
re-creating the recorded macro, but do it the correct way this time.

Creating variables of the correct type

One thing the record feature does not do when creating its code is to
give variables their correct type. Instead it simply stamps them all as
Objects. Of course, creating our own, we are going to do it right.
Start by declaring the variables we had in the first macro, only this
time notice the types of the variables:
Dim swApp As SldWorks.SldWorks
Dim swPart As ModelDoc2

When creating a new instance of the SolidWorks application, it

actually returns an object of type SldWorks.SldWorks. This is the
main SolidWorks variable for the entire SolidWorks environment.
With this macro, we want to create a new part and save it, so we
need another variable of type ModelDoc2. I have also renamed the
variable to swPart for easier reading.
On to the actual main function where all code starts; press enter
twice to give your code some space from the variables, and then
type:
Sub main()
End Sub

20

The Basics
We begin a Sub or Function with exactly that, followed by its name
(in this case main), followed by parentheses and then within them
any parameters, and finally, to close the Sub/Function, we type End
Sub/Function respectively.
Within this sub is where we are going to start coding. Firstly, instead
of creating an instance of the SolidWorks application using the usual
recorded method, we are going to use a more portable method:
Set swApp = GetObject(, "SldWorks.Application")

Here, we are calling a function from the VBA library called

GetObject. This function is used to get a COM object of a currently
running process. The first parameter of this function is the path
name, which is always a blank string or nothing at all, and the second
one is the class name. The class name is the name that the COM
object registers itself with, and SolidWorks registers itself as
SldWorks.Application, so that is what we type.
Lets stop here and add a little error handling. The GetObject
function either returns an object of that class is, or nothing. If we test
the variable as to whether it is nothing or not, then we know if we
succeeded in getting a handle to a running SolidWorks application.
If swApp Is Nothing Then
MsgBox "Error gettings SolidWorks Handle"
Exit Sub
End If

21

The Basics
All we have done here is test if swApp is Nothing, and if it is,
meaning we failed to get a handle to any running SolidWorks
applications, then display a message box error, and exit the sub
effectively quitting the macro.
Now its time to create a new part; in order to better understand
what we need to do to create a part, go back to SolidWorks, leaving
VBE open, and from the menu select Help->API Help, to open up the
reference documentation for SolidWorks API calls. This comes in
handy and is almost always the starting point for any new task.
In the help file, go to the search tab and type in NewDocument
without quotations. In the results to the left double-click
SldWorks::NewDocument. The help file simply uses a double colon
instead of a period to signify that the right hand side is a method or
property of the object to the left.
Reading the help gives us a brief description of what the
NewDocument function does and requires. The help shows that the
function takes 4 parameters:
SldWorks.NewDocument ( templateName, paperSize,
width, height )

The templateName is the full location of the template to create the

document from (a drawing, part or assembly template). The
paperSize is a special type of variable called an enumerator, but we
do not need this variable for creating our part, and the same goes for
width and height. One final note; the help file states that the return
type is either a pointer to the dispatch object or Nothing if it fails. So
we know from that, we can check for nothing again, just like before,
to find out if the operation succeeded.

22

The Basics
Now lets add the line of code to create a new part. For simplicity at
this stage just type in the location of your required part template file;
we could create a drop down list with all available templates of the
currently installed templates, but that would just overwhelm the
exercise at this point.
Set swPart = swApp.NewDocument("C:\Program
Files\SolidWorks\data\templates\Part.prtdot", 0, 0, 0)

Now, lets check whether we managed to create a new part or not.

If swPart Is Nothing Then
MsgBox "Error creating new part"
Exit Sub
End If

And finally, lets save this part to any location you select. Later on we
will create some user interaction that prompts the user for a save
location, but for now just type it in.
Start by searching the help file for SaveAs2 like we saw in the first
macro. Double-clicking on ModelDoc2::SaveAs2 you will notice that
the help file states that this function is obsolete in red writing, so
click the suggested link of ModelDoc2::SaveAs3. This will again tell
you that this is obsolete. Keep clicking until you get to
ModelDocExtension::SaveAs. Now read the help to find out about
the parameters required.
Retval = ModelDocExtension.SaveAs ( Name, Version,
Options, ExportData, Errors, Warnings)

23

The Basics
First, Name is declared as type BSTR, which is a string. This is again
the name and location of where to save the file, which we will type in
manually for now.
Now onto the Version parameter; the help states that this is of type
Long, which is a number, yet the document says it is a format of type
swSaveAsVersion_e. Let me explain; the type swSaveAsVersion_e
is called an enumerator, or enum for short. This is basically a
collection of numbers (Longs) given names for ease of
understanding for the programmer. Instead of typing a number all
the time you can type a descriptive name. This enum, and all of the
others you will encounter for SolidWorks, is located in the
SolidWorks Constant library we referenced at the very beginning, so
all we need to do is access the constant library with SwConst name.
As you type you will notice the menu popping up showing you all
available properties and methods of the previous object. Drill down
until you get to the swSaveAsVersion_e, and you will see the
following options:

From this list select swSaveAsCurrentVersion. You will never use

the other versions for the remainder of this book.
The next parameter, Options, is again an enum, this time of type
swSaveAsOptions_e, so lets take a look at what possible values we
have:

24

The Basics

With enumerators being numbers once compiled, we can combine

any combination of them into one variable, so long as the function
taking it can process combinations. In this case it can, and if you
wanted to pass two options, you would simply separate them like so:
swSaveAsOptions_Copy + swSaveAsOptions_Silent

By separating them by a + we can pass the two as one parameter. In

this case we only need to pass one; swSaveAsOptions_Silent. This
prevents any messages being shown to the user when saving the
document. If you did not want to pass any options for any enum
parameter, you pass the number 0 in its place.
The forth parameter is export data, which is purely used for
exporting 3D PDFs at present, so we simply pass Nothing for this.
Notice for the last two parameters Errors and Warnings, the help file
states they are outputs, not inputs. This means that whatever
variables we pass in here will be updated and set to new values after
the function has run, so we can check the values of these two
variables to understand what has happened and if there are any
errors or warnings.

25

The Basics
Finally, the help file states this function returns a Boolean value
(true/false) indicating whether the save succeeded or failed, so we
can do another check for failure, and if so, we could access the error
and warning variables for more information on the failure, but for
now, we will just accept a failure as a failure.
Putting all this together, with error checking, we get:
Dim bRet As Boolean
Dim lErrors As Long
Dim lWarnings As Long
bRet = swPart.Extension.SaveAs("C:\Part1.SLDPRT",
swSaveAsCurrentVersion, swSaveAsOptions_Silent, Nothing, lErrors,
lWarnings)
If bRet = False Then
MsgBox "Error saving new part"
Exit Sub
End If

Take note: as the function we are using is from the

ModelDocExtension object, not the ModelDoc2 object we have, we
have to select the Extension object from our ModelDoc2 first.
You may notice I have also omitted the SwConst and
swSaveAsVersion_e and swSaveAsOptions_e. This is not exactly
required in VBA it just helps for clarity to start with.
And that is it. Save your macro and test it. If you get any errors
review your code, or look at the complete macro on the
accompanying CD. Find the final listing below.
26

The Basics
Dim swApp As SldWorks.SldWorks
Dim swPart As ModelDoc2
Sub main()
Set swApp = GetObject("", "SldWorks.Application")
If swApp Is Nothing Then
MsgBox "Error gettings SolidWorks Handle"
Exit Sub
End If
Set swPart = swApp.NewDocument("C:\Program
Files\SolidWorks\data\templates\Part.prtdot", 0, 0, 0)
If swPart Is Nothing Then
MsgBox "Error creating new part"
Exit Sub
End If
Dim bRet As Boolean
Dim lErrors As Long
Dim lWarnings As Long
bRet = swPart.Extension.SaveAs("C:\Part1.SLDPRT",
swSaveAsCurrentVersion, swSaveAsOptions_Silent, Nothing, lErrors,
lWarnings)
If bRet = False Then
MsgBox "Error saving new part"
Exit Sub

27

The Basics
End If
End Sub

Hopefully you have learned quite a lot from this section. Although
we have not covered many calls or seemingly done much with
SolidWorks, we have covered a lot of technical ground that will
provide a solid foundation for the rest of the book.
You will find once you know these main foundations, the rest is
simply a case of calling the functions you would like, and through
trial and error, or research or the aid of others, you find what you are
after.

28

Connecting with Visual Studio Express

Download and Install Visual Studio Express
Connect to SolidWorks in C#
Connect to SolidWorks in VB.Net

29

Connecting with Visual Studio Express

Download and Install Visual Studio

Express
Before you can begin you must download and install the Visual
Studio software for your desired language.
Go to http://www.microsoft.com/express/download/default.aspx and
simply download and install either C# Express and/or VB.Net
Express. All guides to installing them are on the site.
When you have installed the program, run it. You may be prompted
to select layout style or preferred language, just select any.
Now you are ready to begin.

30

Connecting with Visual Studio Express

Connect to SolidWorks in C#
When you first open C# Express you are displayed with the following
screen:

To get started, just select File->New Project... and select Windows

Forms Application. In the Name box, enter any name you like and
press OK.
This will then create your project and automatically create a blank
form for you. We are going to create a button that on clicking will
effectively initiate our macro as such.
To the left you will notice a toolbar icon. Click or hover over that
to expand the menu. Find the Button item and drag it onto your
form to create a new button. Once the button is on the form,

31

Connecting with Visual Studio Express

make sure it is selected. On your right will be the properties panel; in
here is where the current selected items properties will appear. For
our button we are going to change the text within it to Start. Scroll
down the properties until you find the property Text, and then type
in Start without the quotations and press enter. The button will
instantly update.

Event Handlers
Now all that is left to do is to add what is called an Event Handler to
the button, so that when the user clicks it, something happens (an
event, or more literally, a function in code, is called). To do this you
can just double-click the button, but to understand it better I will
show you how to do it another way.
In the property window where you just set the text of the button,
notice the
icon. This switches between properties and events.
Click it to take you to the buttons events (make sure the button is
still selected). Now scroll down and find the event called Click, and
double-click it. This will automatically create you the event handler
code and take you to it.

32

Connecting with Visual Studio Express

You will notice you are now in a coding window not a visual design
window. Let me explain; above the Property Panel to the right is the
Solution Explorer. This is the same as the Project Explorer in VBA
that showed all files in the macro. We use this like windows explorer
to open, close, delete and
rename files in our project. The
only file you need to be aware of
right now is the Form1.cs (or
whatever you called your form.
To open the form designer
(where we added the button
visually) just double-click
Form1.cs in the Solution
Explorer; to get to the coding
behind the form right-click and
select View Code.
Back in the code view, you will have some code already in the
window to get you started. This is what Visual Studio created
automatically when you selected to create a Windows Form project.
Just like VBA, VS has added the required reference libraries for
creating a form and added the required code.
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.ComponentModel;
using System.Data;
using System.Drawing;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Windows.Forms;

33

Connecting with Visual Studio Express

namespace ConntectingWithCS
{
public partial class Form1 : Form
{
public Form1()
{
InitializeComponent();
}
private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
}
}
}

Lets go through each line of this code again so that you understand
what is going on.
The only lines that can be outside of a class in VS are special
declarations such as #Regions, pre-processor tags, namespaces
and using statements. The only one we are concerned about is the
using statement.

The using Statement

In the C# language, using is a statement that simply tells the
compiler that in any code within this file, we will be using classes and
functions from the specified library. Strictly speaking, you can
34

Connecting with Visual Studio Express

remove all the using statements and still make your code work, but
the advantage of using is that, like in VBA where I excluded typing
swConst and swSaveAsVersion_e, it tells the compiler that if we
typed Environment (which is actually a member of the System
Library) it knows that we are accessing the System.Environment
object.
Another example is that without typing using System.Drawing, we
would have to write the following to access a Point object:
System.Drawing.Point

Whereas by having the using System.Drawing statement at the top

of the code, we only need to type:
Point

So if brief, using statements simply save typing long-winded code

statements.

Namespaces
Namespaces, again like using statements, are not strictly needed. To
keep this short, you can remove the namespace statement and its
open and closing curly braces or leave them in. For our usage
throughout this book it will make no difference. They are basically
used to group classes and coding blocks into a single accessible
name, to be accessed like an object.

35

Connecting with Visual Studio Express

The next line is the declaration of the class for the form we created
(the form with the button). This will always be generated
automatically for our use so you do not need to type this part
manually at any stage.
public partial class Form1 : Form

To explain; the public keyword states that this class is accessibly to

any other part of code within the program. Do not worry too much
about this; it does not play any important role for us. The partial
statement means that this class has been split into multiple files. The
other file in this case is the code that VS has created automatically to
create our form, the button and the event handler links etc... To take
a look at this file, go to the Solution Explorer, click the [+] next to
the Form1.cs file and double-click the Form1.Designer.cs file to see
its code. Do not worry if you do not understand this code because we
are here to focus on SolidWorks programming.
The { } braces are used for all classes, functions, if, else, while, do
and other statements in C# to determine the start and end of its
block of code. This is equivalent to VBAs If ... Then and End If, or
While... Wend.
Within the main class (Form1), we find the following function:
public Form1()
{
InitializeComponent();
}

36

Connecting with Visual Studio Express

This is called the constructor class, and this gets called as soon as the
form is created. A constructor class has the same name as the class it
is within (in this case Form1), and has no return value. The only
function within it is a call to the function defined in the
Form1.Designer.cs class that is created automatically by VS to
create the form, create all the items like our button, add event
handlers, set properties, and show the form. If you placed code after
this InitializeComponent function call, that code would get run as
soon as the form is created, so to the user it would appear that the
code runs as soon as they run the program. As this is not the
behaviour we want, we go on to create a function that is called on
the click of a button instead.

The Button Click function

Visual Studio automatically created the following function for us
when we chose to add an event handler for the Click event of the
button in the previous stage.
private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
}

A function in C# has the following structure:

[accessibility] [return type] [function name] (
[parameters] )
{
// Code here }

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Connecting with Visual Studio Express

Accessibility is either public, private or protected as standard. For
our usage we are going to be using public throughout.
Return type must always be defined, except for constructors and
destructors. This is the type of variable that the function returns,
such as a number (Integer, Double, Float) or text (String), or
true/false (Boolean) as some examples. If your function does not
return any value then the type is void.
The function name is anything you like, so long as it begins with a
letter, and contains no special characters or spaces.
The parameters inside the function are defined in the following
structure:
[pass as] [variable type] [variable name]

The pass as value can be out or ref, or left out completely. By

default, if you pass a variable without stating out or ref, and that
function then alters the variable inside its own code, once the
function has run and returned, the variables value will return to what
it was before the function call, so it remains unaffected. If this is not
the behaviour you want (such as we will see later on), then you can
pass the variable as out or ref. The out keyword means the variable
you are passing must not have been assigned a value yet, and if you
pass it as ref, it must have. You will see this used later.
The variable type is any type like the return value, such as a number,
text, object etc... A variable parameter type cannot be void.
The variable name can be any name again, starting with a letter
containing no special characters or reserved names or spaces.

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Connecting with Visual Studio Express

So using that knowledge we know that this event handler function
that VS has created for us when the button is clicked returns no value
(void) back to its caller, is private so inaccessible to certain areas of
code, is called button1_Click, and takes 2 parameters.
The first parameter is of type object. This is because an event
handler can be attached to many different objects, in this case it is
our button, so this variable called sender is actually a reference to
our button object. The second is a special type EventArgs; this
variable contains information about the event. We do not need to do
anything with either of these parameters so lets move on.

Adding the SolidWorks References

Before we can do anything, we must add the same references to
SolidWorks that we did in VBA. In the Solution Explorer, right-click
the References item and click Add Reference... Once the dialog
appears, click the COM tab, and then from the list select the
following items (holding Ctrl to select multiple in one go), and click
OK.
SldWorks 2008 Type Library
SolidWorks 2008 Commands type Library
SolidWorks 2008 Constant type Library
SolidWorks 2008 exposed type libraries for add-in use

And then finally, at the top of the code where the using statements
are, add:
using SldWorks;

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Connecting with Visual Studio Express

Writing our SolidWorks Code

We now have an entire C# program structure, ready to write our
SolidWorks code inside our event handler function. All examples and
codes done in C# from now on will presume this same structure, and
only provide and describe the code that will be run inside this event
handler, or wherever you decide to put it. So for our first example
lets re-create our first written macro we made in VBA.

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Connecting with Visual Studio Express

So first lets define our variables again; we can define these either
inside this function, or inside the main class function. For example:
public partial class Form1 : Form
{
SldWorks.SldWorks swApp;
ModelDoc2

swModel;

...
private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { ... }
}

Or inside the button1_Click function shown above...

private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
SldWorks.SldWorks swApp;
ModelDoc2 swModel;
...
}

For best practise in the future I will be writing the main variables in
the main class not the event handler.
Declaring a variable in C# is a little different than VBA; you simply
state the type first, followed by the name. As you can see, the two
variables specified above are the same types of the ones we wrote in
VBA.
With these variables defined, we move on to the main SolidWorks
code. Take a look at the original VBA code; see the slight changes:
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Connecting with Visual Studio Express

VBA
Set swApp = GetObject("", "SldWorks.Application")
If swApp Is Nothing Then
MsgBox "Error gettings SolidWorks Handle"
Exit Sub
End If
Set swPart = swApp.NewDocument("C:\Program
Files\SolidWorks\data\templates\Part.prtdot", 0, 0, 0)
If swPart Is Nothing Then
MsgBox "Error creating new part"
Exit Sub
End If
Dim bRet As Boolean
Dim lErrors As Long
Dim lWarnings As Long
bRet = swPart.Extension.SaveAs("C:\Part1.SLDPRT",
swSaveAsCurrentVersion, swSaveAsOptions_Silent, Nothing, lErrors,
lWarnings)
If bRet = False Then
MsgBox "Error saving new part"
Exit Sub
End If

Now, lets do exactly this but in C# within our event handler button
function.

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Connecting with Visual Studio Express

Firstly, because C# does not use the GetObject function to acquire a
handle to SolidWorks, we must use another function found in the
System.Runtime.Interop library. Add the following line to the using
section:
using System.Runtime.InteropServices;

Now, to get the active SolidWorks object, we do this:

swApp =
(SldWorks.SldWorks)Marshal.GetActiveObject("SldWorks.Application");

Note that there is no such thing as a Set statement like in VBA, we

do not need this. What we are doing here is calling the function
GetActiveObject from the Marshal class in the
System.Runtime.InteropServices library we added just. This
function is identical to the VBA GetObject function.

Casting
Because C# is stricter on variable types, unlike VBA, we must do all
the type conversions ourselves. Because the function
GetActiveObject returns a variable of type object, we must convert
it to the correct type, using a method called Casting.

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Connecting with Visual Studio Express

To cast the object returned from GetActiveObject, we simply write
the type of variable we would like it converting to inside parentheses
before the method and after the equals sign. This does the job of
converting the object to our variables type. In this case we typed
SldWorks.SldWorks, which is the type of the swApp variable.

Try/Catch block
Now we wish to check if we have managed to get the SolidWorks
object; however, this time we do this a little differently. Because the
GetActiveObject function actually throws a system error if it fails we
must try the function and catch any system errors that get thrown. If
we do not handle this error our program will simply crash. We do this
by placing the statement within a try/catch block.
try
{
swApp =
(SldWorks.SldWorks)Marshal.GetActiveObject("SldWorks.Application");
}
catch
{
MessageBox.Show("Error getting SolidWorks Handle");
return;
}

When you place something inside a try block, your program will
handle any system errors that are caused by any code you place
within there, and instead of crashing your program, it passes them to
the catch block. So in effect, we try the GetActiveObject function,

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Connecting with Visual Studio Express

and if it succeeds our code continues to execute after the catch
block. If it fails, our code jumps out of the try block at the point the
error occurs, and goes straight to the catch block to process any
code within there, not executing any code in the try block after the
point of the error.
If we get the handle, we carry on to after the catch block with a
workable swApp variable. If it fails, we show the user a message box
and call the return statement, which returns the function, effectively
ending it, so we proceed no further with the function.

Creating a new document

Now we have a workable swApp variable, we want to create a new
document. To do this we call exactly the same function as we did
before, with exactly the same parameters, setting the swModel
variable at the same time.
swModel = (ModelDoc2)swApp.NewDocument(@"C:\Program
Files\SolidWorks\data\templates\Part.prtdot", 0, 0, 0);

The only thing different here is the @ sign placed within the
parentheses but before the opening quotes. All that this means is the
following string contains back/forward slashes as literal characters
instead of escape characters. If we did not put the @ in, we would
need to put \\ for every single slash we wrote, because as standard \
is used to place special characters in strings, such as \t for a tab.
Also, we have done another casting from object to ModelDoc2 as
our variable is of type ModelDoc2.

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Connecting with Visual Studio Express

When typing in any .Net language, you will find you get much better
feedback from the Vs IntelliSense telling you about the object you
are using.

Now to check that the document was created correctly:

if (swModel == null)
{
MessageBox.Show("Error creating new part");
return;
}

This statement says if swModel is equal to null then. In C#, ==

means is equal to. When setting variables in C# we use single
equals sign (=), but when performing conditional checks such as is
equal to we use double equals (==).
C#
==
!=
<=
>=
<
>
=
*=
/=
^=
+=
-=

46

Is Equal To
Is Not Equal To
Is Less Than or Equal To (Numeric)
Is Greater Than or Equal To
Is Less Than
Is Greater Than
Set variable to left
Multiple left variable by right
Divide left variable by right
XOR left variable by right
Add right variable to right
Subtract right variable from left

Connecting with Visual Studio Express

VB.Net
=
<>
<=
>=
<
>
*=
/=
^=
+=
-=

Is Equal To / Set variable to left

Is Not Equal To
Is Less Than or Equal To (Numeric)
Is Greater Than or Equal To
Is Less Than
Is Greater Than
Multiple left variable by right
Divide left variable by right
XOR left variable by right
Add right variable to right
Subtract right variable from left

Saving the part

Now it is time to save the part; in order to use constants such as the
save as version and options, I have added the following to the using
section, to save us having to type SwConst before every constant.
using SwConst;

Now we define some variables used in the SaveAs function, then

attempt to save the part, and finally check if it succeeded.
int lErrors = 0, lWarnings = 0;
bool bRet = swModel.Extension.SaveAs(@"C:\Part1.SLDPRT",
(int)swSaveAsVersion_e.swSaveAsCurrentVersion,
(int)swSaveAsOptions_e.swSaveAsOptions_Silent, null, ref lErrors, ref
lWarnings);
if (!bRet)

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Connecting with Visual Studio Express

{
MessageBox.Show("Error saving new part");
}

Firstly, we defined the variables needed for the error and warning
values. Then at the same time as declaring the variable bRet (true or
false), we also set it by calling the SaveAs function.
A few differences this time compared to the VBA version. In VBA, to
represent nothing we pas the special name Nothing, in C# the
equivalent is null.
We also cast the constant enums to int as the function requests int
values. And if you notice the Intellisense tooltip you see that it
states that the error and warning variables should be passed as ref.
If you recall earlier me telling you about ref and out keywords; by
passing these two variables as ref means that when the SaveAs
function alters them within its own code, the two variables can be set
inside the SaveAs function. The easiest way to explain it is that if you
pass variables without a ref or out keyword, they are copied to the
function, not sent directly, so any alterations made are made to
copies of the variables, not the originals. By passing them with ref or
out, the originals are sent.

Notice we passed the two variables we defined for errors and

warnings as ref, so as soon as the SaveAs function has been called
the variables will be set to whatever SaveAs set them to. We could
then check these variables after if the function returned false
(meaning it failed to save). We also had to assign them before

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Connecting with Visual Studio Express

passing them as they are passed as ref, not out; that is the reason for
assigning them the value 0.
Once the SaveAs function has been called and the return value has
been saved in the bRet variable, we then check whether this bRet is
true or false. If you place a Boolean value inside an if statement,
there is no need to do a check such as bRet == true or bRet == false,
you just put the variable in the parentheses. Because we do not want
to check if bRet is true (success), but false, we place the not sign (!)
before it to say if bRet is not true, instead of if bRet is true so the
code within the if statement will only run if bRet is false.
There is no need to place a return in this block as it is the end of our
code within this function anyway. And that is it, go to Build->Build
Solution to build your program, and then Debug->Start Without
Debugging (or press F6, then Ctrl+F5) to run your program.
Make sure SolidWorks is open then go to your form and click the
button to see the magic. If you have errors check you code with the
code on the CD. Complete listing below:
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.ComponentModel;
using System.Data;
using System.Drawing;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Windows.Forms;
using System.Runtime.InteropServices;
using SldWorks;

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Connecting with Visual Studio Express

using SwConst;
namespace ConntectingWithCS
{
public partial class Form1 : Form
{
SldWorks.SldWorks swApp;
ModelDoc2

swModel;

public Form1()
{
InitializeComponent();
}
private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
try
{
swApp =
(SldWorks.SldWorks)Marshal.GetActiveObject("SldWorks.Application");
}
catch
{
MessageBox.Show("Error getting SolidWorks Handle");
return;
}
swModel = (ModelDoc2)swApp.NewDocument(@"C:\Program
Files\SolidWorks\data\templates\Part.prtdot", 0, 0, 0);

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Connecting with Visual Studio Express

if (swModel == null)
{
MessageBox.Show("Error creating new part");
return;
}
int lErrors = 0, lWarnings = 0;
bool bRet = swModel.Extension.SaveAs(@"C:\Part1.SLDPRT",
(int)swSaveAsVersion_e.swSaveAsCurrentVersion,
(int)swSaveAsOptions_e.swSaveAsOptions_Silent, null, ref lErrors, ref
lWarnings);
if (!bRet)
{
MessageBox.Show("Error saving new part");
}
}
}
}

One thing you may notice is that C# requires every statement line to
end with a semi-colon (;).

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Connecting with Visual Studio Express

Connecting to SolidWorks in VB.Net

When you first open VB.Net Express you are displayed with the
following screen:

To get started, just select File->New Project... and select Windows

Forms Application. In the Name box, enter any name you like and
press OK.
This will then create your project and automatically create a blank
form for you. We are going to create a button that on clicking will
effectively initiate our macro.
From this point on up until you add the event handler to the button,
is exactly the same process as the C# section, so refer to that. Once
you have created the event handler you will be taken to the coding
section, but this time it looks rather different from the C# code.

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Connecting with Visual Studio Express

You will also notice that in
the Solution Explorer, by
default, there is no
Reference item. Just click
the second icon in the
explorer called Show All
Files to show the
References folder.
Add the SolidWorks references just like you did in the C# project.
Now you are ready to begin.
VisualBasic.Net follows VBA much closer than C# so you may find it
similar to the VBA example.
VB.Net does not use the using statements like C#, it uses Imports
instead. So at the very top of the forms code (right-click on
Form1.vb->View Code) place this code to import the SolidWorks
library in for use. Again this is not essential it just saves typing the
library name before every variable.
Imports SldWorks

Lets define the usual variables by using the VB.Net syntax:

Dim [variable name] As [variable type]

Place the variables inside the main class function, not the button
click function. You entire code so far should look like this:

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Connecting with Visual Studio Express

Imports SldWorks
Public Class Form1
Dim swApp As SldWorks.SldWorks
Dim swModel As SldWorks.ModelDoc2
Private Sub Button1_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e
As System.EventArgs) Handles Button1.Click
End Sub
End Class

To get an instance of SolidWorks, in the button click function place

the following; it is exactly the same as VBA:
swApp = GetObject("", "SldWorks.Application")

And now we check if we managed to get the handle. This again is

very similar to VBA so requires no explaining:
If swApp Is Nothing Then
MsgBox("Error getting SolidWorks Handle")
Exit Sub
End If

Exit Sub is the VB.Net equivalent of C#s return, to effectively

return from the current function or sub.
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Connecting with Visual Studio Express

With a working SolidWorks application instance we will now attempt
to create a new document and at the same time assign the new
document to the swModel variable.
swModel = swApp.NewDocument("C:\Program
Files\SolidWorks\data\templates\Part.prtdot", 0, 0, 0)

Like VBA, VB.Net does explicit object casting automatically, so we

do not need to manually cast the returned object to ModelDoc2
type, like we did not need to cast the object from GetObject to
SldWorks.SldWorks above.
And again, we check if we managed to create the new part:
If swModel Is Nothing Then
MsgBox("Error creating new part")
Exit Sub
End If

Before we save, we will add the following to the Imports section to

save us some typing:
Imports SwConst

And define the required variables and pass the errors and warning
variables as references, like in C#. Only in VB.Net we do not need to
state the keyword ByRef as VB.Net automatically passes the
variables as references without any keywords.

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Connecting with Visual Studio Express

Dim lErrors As Long = 0, lWarnings As Long = 0
Dim bRet As Boolean = swModel.Extension.SaveAs("C:\Part1.SLDPRT",
swSaveAsVersion_e.swSaveAsCurrentVersion,
swSaveAsOptions_e.swSaveAsOptions_Silent, Nothing, lErrors,
lWarnings)

When passing by reference we need to assign an initial value to the

variables like in C#, this is why we set lErrors and lWarnings to 0.
Finally, we check if we managed to save the part.
If Not bRet Then
MsgBox("Error saving new part")
End If

And thats it for VB.Net. Easy huh? Just press Ctrl+F5 to build and
start your project and test it again just like the C# version.
As usual, if you have any problems, double-check your code, and if all
else fail, compare it to the working version on the CD.
This template will be used throughout the rest of the book just like
the C# template, and only the coding within the event handler will
be displayed and explained from now on.
Important Note: All examples on the CD are compiled with
references to SolidWorks 2008 SP3.0. If for any reason you get
errors when building them, remove and re-add your SolidWorks
references and try again. This is a common problem for most people
when using examples from another machine.

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Connecting with Visual Studio Express

VB.Net
Imports SldWorks
Imports SwConst
Public Class Form1
Dim swApp As SldWorks.SldWorks
Dim swModel As SldWorks.ModelDoc2
Private Sub Button1_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e
As System.EventArgs) Handles Button1.Click
swApp = GetObject("", "SldWorks.Application")
If swApp Is Nothing Then
MsgBox("Error getting SolidWorks Handle")
Exit Sub
End If
swModel = swApp.NewDocument("C:\Program
Files\SolidWorks\data\templates\Part.prtdot", 0, 0, 0)
If swModel Is Nothing Then
MsgBox("Error creating new part")
Exit Sub
End If
Dim lErrors As Long = 0, lWarnings As Long = 0
Dim bRet As Boolean =
swModel.Extension.SaveAs("C:\Part1.SLDPRT",

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Connecting with Visual Studio Express

swSaveAsVersion_e.swSaveAsCurrentVersion,
swSaveAsOptions_e.swSaveAsOptions_Silent, Nothing, lErrors,
lWarnings)
If Not bRet Then
MsgBox("Error saving new part")
End If
End Sub
End Class

58

Starting SolidWorks Programming

Saving Drawing Sheets as DXF
Get Document Information
Displaying Document Information

59

Starting SolidWorks Programming

Right, lets get into some interesting SolidWorks programming!
Working with the templates we have created previously, make a new
macro or project and connect to SolidWorks. Call the SolidWorks
object variable swApp.

Saving Drawing Sheets as DXF

One of the most common and popular requests, and often one of the
driving factors for getting into SolidWorks API programming is to do
things automatically that the user would normally have to do over
and over manually. The following code will allow us to save every
sheet of the current drawing to separate DXF files. We will also get
the save as location from the user in the .Net examples.
To get a handle to the current open drawing in SolidWorks we do the
following:
C#
swModel = (ModelDoc2)swApp.ActiveDoc;
if (swModel == null)
{
MessageBox.Show("Failed to get active document");
return;
}
if (swModel.GetType() != (int)swDocumentTypes_e.swDocDRAWING)
{
MessageBox.Show("Active document is not a drawing");
return;
}

60

Starting SolidWorks Programming

VBA
Set swModel = swApp.ActiveDoc
If swModel Is Nothing Then
MsgBox "Failed to get active document"
Exit Sub
End If
If swModel.GetType() <> swDocumentTypes_e.swDocDRAWING Then
MsgBox "Active document is not a drawing"
Exit Sub
End If

* Find VB.Net example on CD

Notice we get the ActiveDoc object from swApp, which will return
either nothing or the handle to the document that is visible in
SolidWorks. We then check that we have a document, and if we do
we check that it is a drawing, else we stop. We do this by calling the
ModelDoc2 function GetType, which returns an integer value
representing the type of either None, Part, Assembly or Drawing. If
you read the API help and type in ModelDoc2::GetType as the
search you will find that it doesnt tell us much regarding this, but at
the bottom it does give us the possible return values:
Remarks
The retval argument might be one of the following values:
swDocNONE - no document
swDocPART - part document
swDocASSEMBLY- assembly document
swDocDRAWING - drawing document
61

Starting SolidWorks Programming

Object Browser
Here is how I found out that the different type values I needed were
in the enumerator swDocumentType_e. If you are in VBA, go to
View->Object Browser or press F2, and if you are in .Net then go to
View->Other Windows->Object Browser. This will bring up a new
window thats a bit like a search tool. From here you can look at all of
the properties and methods (functions) that any library object has. It
comes in handy when you simply need to search for a function as no
other help or documentation tells you what you need.
In the search box, type in any one of the values that the help file told
us was a possible return value, lets use swDocNONE without
quotes.
Once you press enter
you will get the results.
Notice that only one
object contains this
exact text, and that
object is within the
SwConst library, under
swDocumentType_e.
And that is how we find
out where the values are
stored. Using this we
just compare the type
returned from the GetType function, with the drawing enumerator
value.
With a handle to the active drawing sheet, we get a list of all the
drawing sheets, activate each one and then save them as a DXF.

62

Starting SolidWorks Programming

C#
DrawingDoc swDrwDoc = (DrawingDoc)swModel;
string[] sheetNames = (string[])swDrwDoc.GetSheetNames();
string saveAsLocation = GetLocationFromUser();
foreach (string sheetname in sheetNames)
{
// Activate and save drawing sheet here
}

VBA
Dim sheetNames As Variant
sheetNames = swModel.GetSheetNames()
Dim saveAsLocation As String
Dim sheetname As Variant
For Each sheetname In sheetNames
' Activate and save drawing sheet here
Next sheetname

Firstly if we use .Net, because our active document variable

swModel is of type ModelDoc2, we have to cast it to the specific
document type of DrawingDoc. This is done automatically in VBA.
With the DrawingDoc object, we get all of the sheet names of this
drawing by calling GetSheetNames. In .Net we cast this to an array
(collection) of strings (text values), which is basically a list of the
sheet names. In VBA we use the variable equivalent Variant.

63

Starting SolidWorks Programming

Next we call a function that will ask the user to specify a save
location for the DXF files that will be created. We will write this
function later.
Then, we use a For Each statement, which will loop all of the code
within its block for each item it finds within an array. So in this case
we loop through every sheet name in the collection of sheet names,
so that we can process each one.
Within the for each statement block, we write the code to firstly
activate the sheet, and secondly, save it as DXF.
C#
int lErrors = 0, lWarnings = 0;
bool bRet;
int eVersion = (int)swSaveAsVersion_e.swSaveAsCurrentVersion;
int eOptions = (int)swSaveAsOptions_e.swSaveAsOptions_Silent;
foreach (string sheetname in sheetNames)
{
swDrwDoc.ActivateSheet(sheetname);
bRet = swModel.Extension.SaveAs(saveAsLocation + sheetname +
".dxf", eVersion, eOptions, null, ref lErrors, ref lWarnings);
if (!bRet)
MessageBox.Show("Failed to save " + sheetname + " as DXF");
}

VBA
Dim lErrors As Long, lWarnings As Long
lErrors = lWarnings = 0

64

Starting SolidWorks Programming

Dim bRet As Boolean
Dim eVersion As Integer
Dim eOptions As Integer
eVersion = swSaveAsCurrentVersion
eOptions = swSaveAsOptions_Silent
Dim sheetname As Variant
For Each sheetname In sheetNames
swModel.ActivateSheet sheetname
bRet = swModel.Extension.SaveAs(sheetname & ".dxf", eVersion,
eOptions, Nothing, lErrors, lWarnings)
If bRet = False Then MsgBox "Failed to save " & sheetname & " as
DXF."
Next sheetname

Within the for each loop we start by activating the current sheet we
are iterating through by calling the ActivateSheet function of the
DrawingDoc object, and passing the current sheet name as the
parameter.
Then, we call the SaveAs function just as we did in the previous
chapter, only this time instead of specifying a name ending in
.sldprt, we end it with .dxf. SolidWorks will automatically save
the file as a DXF without you needing to do anything else.

65

Starting SolidWorks Programming

As for the save location; once we get our path where the user would
like to save the file, we add the current sheet name and then the dxf
extension.

Get input from the user

The last piece of the puzzle is to write the GetLocationFromUser
function we called in the previous step. Remember to place functions
outside of other functions, but inside the main class. You may notice
I have not wrote a function for VBA as it is quite long winded to
explain at this stage.
In .Net, we can use a System library function to ask the user to select
a folder, and then return the selected location. We place the
terminating backslash to the path as the function we use leaves it
off.
public string GetLocationFromUser()
{
FolderBrowserDialog folderBrowser = new FolderBrowserDialog();
folderBrowser.ShowDialog();
return folderBrowser.SelectedPath + @"\";
}

Creating a new instance of the FolderBrowserDialog class, we then

call the ShowDialog function which shows the standard Folder
Browser to the user for them to select a folder. Our code will not
continue until the user has closed this browser. Once it has returned,
we return the path that the user selected. If they clicked Cancel it will
return blank and so save in the same location as the drawing.

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Starting SolidWorks Programming

Run your code and watch as the drawing sheet flicks between each
drawing sheet and saves as a DXF.
Note: At the time of
writing, SolidWorks still
has a bug in setting the
DXF properties to save
only the active sheet and
not all when we run the
SaveAs command, so I
left out the code for
setting up the DXF
options to save just the
active sheet. If your
output DXF files have all
the sheets within them, just go to manually save a drawing, select
DXF, and then click the Options button and make sure the last
setting is selected as Active Sheet Only.
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Starting SolidWorks Programming

Getting Document Information

Some of the most important things you need to know before you can
create any sophisticated or complex code are filenames and
locations, titles, configuration name(s), the type of file, if we are in
read-only/view-only/large assembly mode, the material and/or
summary information.
Start with the usual template connecting into SolidWorks, and then
get a handle to the active model document using swApp.ActiveDoc
setting it to the swModel variable like in the last example. It is this
model handle we will be performing all our inspection on.

Filename and Location

Lets start with getting the complete location and filename of the
active document, and then we will split this information into Path,
Filename and Extension.
If you are using C# or VB.Net, first add the following line to the
using/Imports section respectively to allow us to use functions from
the Input/Output library.
Using System.IO; or Imports System.IO

C#
string fullpath = swModel.GetPathName();
string filelocation = Path.GetDirectoryName(fullpath);
string filename = Path.GetFileNameWithoutExtension(fullpath);
string extension = Path.GetExtension(fullpath);

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Starting SolidWorks Programming

Using VBA is quite a lot more work to achieve the same goal. Firstly,
we must create a function that will return the last position of string
within another string. Explaining this function is beyond the scope of
this book so if you wish to understand this function you can discuss it
on the AngelSix forum, but basically the concept is to find the last
occurrence of a certain character such as a period (.) to find the
extension, or a backslash (\) to find the directory.
VBA
Function LastIndexOf(stringToSearch As String, searchFor As String) As
Integer
Dim iPos As Integer
Dim iTemp As Integer
iPos = -1
iTemp = 0
Do Until iPos = 0
If iPos = -1 Then iPos = 0
iPos = InStr(iPos + 1, stringToSearch, searchFor)
If iPos <> 0 Then iTemp = iPos
Loop
iPos = iTemp - 1
LastIndexOf = iPos
End Function

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Starting SolidWorks Programming

Now with this function at our disposal, it is still a bit messier than the
.Net version:
VBA
Dim fullname As String
Dim filelocation As String
Dim filename As String
Dim extension As String
fullname = swModel.GetPathName()
filelocation = Left(fullname, LastIndexOf(fullname, "\"))
Dim filenamewithext As String
filenamewithext = Right(fullname, Len(fullname) - Len(filelocation) - 1)
filename = Left(filenamewithext, LastIndexOf(filenamewithext, "."))
extension = Right(fullname, Len(fullname) - LastIndexOf(fullname, "."))

Title & Type of File

Getting the title is simple enough; this is the name that is displayed
in the windows explorer when you select to open it, so if you have
the windows option of displaying known file extensions (such as
.doc, .txt etc...) then the title will have the extension also.
You have already seen how to get the type of file from the previous
chapter, but not how to change the numeric value we got back into a
text or descriptive name for the user.
C#
string title = swModel.GetTitle();

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Starting SolidWorks Programming

string filetype = ((swDocumentTypes_e)swModel.GetType()).ToString();

The title is self-explanatory. As for the file type; we start by calling

swModel.GetType(), which returns an integer value. From there we
cast it to the enumerator type swDocumentTypes_e, which will give
us an enumerator object, and then we simply convert that to a string
representation.
VBA
Dim title As String
Dim filetype As Integer
title = swModel.GetTitle()
filetype = swModel.GetType()

Due to its very limited powers VBA has no easy way to get a string
representation of an enumerator, so we simply get a number.
Obviously not much use for the user to see, but if you came to that
level anyway I would recommend using C# or VB.Net.

File/Model Modes
As well as titles and paths, we may need to know if the file we are
working on is capable of having itself altered and saved, or if we can
edit it or not. This is where file modes come in to play.
We will get all 3 file modes at once and store them in Boolean
variables:

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Starting SolidWorks Programming

C#
bool bReadOnly = swModel.IsOpenedReadOnly();
bool bViewOnly = swModel.IsOpenedViewOnly();
bool bLargeMode = swModel.LargeAssemblyMode;

VBA
Dim bReadOnly As Boolean
Dim bViewOnly As Boolean
Dim bLargeMode As Boolean
bReadOnly = swModel.IsOpenedReadOnly()
bViewOnly = swModel.IsOpenedViewOnly()
bLargeMode = swModel.LargeAssemblyMode

Documents Material
Another piece of potentially useful information is the current
material that is set for the part. The material has several values; the
visible user-friendly name, and the internal ID.
C#
string materialName = swModel.MaterialUserName;
string materialID = swModel.MaterialIdName;

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Starting SolidWorks Programming

VBA
Dim materialName As String
Dim materialID As String
materialName = swModel.MaterialUserName
materialID = swModel.MaterialIdName

That was easy enough wasnt it? If you retrieve these values from an
assembly or drawing, or a part without a material set, you simply get
a blank string returned.

Configuration Names
Sometimes you may need the names of all configurations within a
part or assembly, for things such as retrieving preview images,
settings custom properties or printing.
C#
string[] configNames = (string[])swModel.GetConfigurationNames();
foreach (string configname in configNames)
{
// Do anything with configname here
}

Here in the first line we create a new array of string values, and then
cast the object returned from the swModel function
GetConfigurationNames to the correct type.

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Starting SolidWorks Programming

Then, to access each configuration name one by one, we use a
foreach loop.
And here is the VBA version:
VBA
Dim configNames As Variant
Dim configname As Variant
configNames = swModel.GetConfigurationNames()
For Each configname In configNames
' Do anything with configname here
Next

Summary Information
Mainly useful for tracking, searching or archiving, the summary
information is a powerful piece of information to have at your
disposal. The Summary Information is the information set in the
File->Properties form such as title, subject, author, keywords,
comments, saved by, creation date and save date.
The .Net versions may seem more complicated, but this is purely
because we are using an automated method, that will update itself
whenever the SolidWorks enumerator values change, whereas the
VBA version is simply a static code that may well become invalid:

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Starting SolidWorks Programming

C#
string[] summmaryNames =
Enum.GetNames(typeof(swSummInfoField_e));
foreach (string summaryName in summaryNames)
{
int sumId = (int)Enum.Parse(typeof(swSummInfoField_e),
summaryName);
string summaryValue = swModel.get_SummaryInfo(sumID);
}

Firstly we get all of the names in the swSummaryInfoField_e

enumerator, which contains all of the ID values we need to retrieve
the values of the summary fields.
With the summary names (which will be Title, Subject, Author etc...),
we then go through them one at a time using another foreach loop
and call the swModel function get_SummaryInfo, which takes a
single parameter of an ID, which we retrieve by parsing the name of
the enumerator back to an actual enumerator, and then casting it
into an integer. This seems a bit messy but it is in fact about the only
way to automatically iterate through a set of enumerator values.
Now we access all the information we require through the
summaryName, sumID and summaryValue each time we enter the
loop.
In VBA, we cannot automatically get the names of an enumerator set
so we have to manually type each one in. Be warned this is not good
programming practise:

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Starting SolidWorks Programming

VBA
Dim sumInfoTitle As String
Dim sumInfoSubject As String
Dim sumInfoAuthor As String
Dim sumInfoKeywords As String
Dim sumInfoComment As String
Dim sumInfoSavedBy As String
Dim sumInfoCreateDate As String
Dim sumInfoSaveDate As String
Dim sumInfoCreateDate2 As String
Dim sumInfoSaveDate2 As String
sumInfoTitle = swModel.summaryinfo(swSumInfoTitle)
sumInfoSubject = swModel.summaryinfo(swSumInfoSubject)
sumInfoAuthor = swModel.summaryinfo(swSumInfoAuthor)
sumInfoKeywords = swModel.summaryinfo(swSumInfoKeywords)
sumInfoComment = swModel.summaryinfo(swSumInfoComment)
sumInfoSavedBy = swModel.summaryinfo(swSumInfoSavedBy)
sumInfoCreateDate = swModel.summaryinfo(swSumInfoCreateDate)
sumInfoSaveDate = swModel.summaryinfo(swSumInfoSaveDate)
sumInfoCreateDate2 = swModel.summaryinfo(swSumInfoCreateDate2)
sumInfoSaveDate2 = swModel.summaryinfo(swSumInfoSaveDate2)

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Starting SolidWorks Programming

Display Document Information

Now we have gathered all this useful information, it would be nice to
actually see it. We start by creating a multiline textbox to put the
information into, and then simply add all of the information
separated by a new line for each item.
In the .Net languages we already have a form created automatically
for us, and if you are using the template from the first chapter to run
this code, we already have a button, so all that is left is to add a
textbox. Go to the Form Designer by double-clicking the Form1.cs
file in the Solution Explorer. Now go to the Toolbox to the left and
this time instead of dragging a Button object on to our form we are
going to drag a TextBox object on.

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Starting SolidWorks Programming

Now drag the textbox to any size you would like and position it as
such. Then making sure it is still selected, go to the Properties
Window to the right, and set the following properties:

And here is what my form looks like:

Now switch back to the coding of the form. Within the buttons event
handler function, we write the code to connect to SolidWorks and to
get the active document code, and then all of the code we have just
been writing above. It should all make sense if you have been
following along, and the only thing different is that instead of storing
the information in separate variables, we have simply made one
string variable that stores all of the values, separated by a new line.

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Starting SolidWorks Programming

C#
try
{
swApp =
(SldWorks.SldWorks)Marshal.GetActiveObject("SldWorks.Application");
}
catch
{
MessageBox.Show("Error getting SolidWorks Handle");
return;
}
swModel = (ModelDoc2)swApp.ActiveDoc;
if (swModel == null)
{
MessageBox.Show("Failed to get active document");
return;
}
string nl = System.Environment.NewLine;
string strInfo = "File Information" + nl;
string fullpath = swModel.GetPathName();
strInfo += "Full Path: " + fullpath + nl;
if (fullpath != string.Empty)
{
strInfo += "Directory: " + Path.GetDirectoryName(fullpath) + nl;
strInfo += "Filename: " + Path.GetFileNameWithoutExtension(fullpath)
+ nl;

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Starting SolidWorks Programming

strInfo += "Extension: " + Path.GetExtension(fullpath) + nl;
}
strInfo += "Title: " + swModel.GetTitle() + nl;
strInfo += "File Type: " +
((swDocumentTypes_e)swModel.GetType()).ToString() + nl;
strInfo += "Read-only: " + swModel.IsOpenedReadOnly().ToString() + nl;
strInfo += "View-only: " + swModel.IsOpenedViewOnly().ToString() + nl;
strInfo += "Large Assembly Mode: " +
swModel.LargeAssemblyMode.ToString() + nl;
strInfo += "Material Name: " + swModel.MaterialUserName + nl;
strInfo += "Material ID: " + swModel.MaterialIdName + nl;
strInfo += "Configuration Names" + nl;
string[] configNames = (string[])swModel.GetConfigurationNames();
foreach (string configname in configNames)
{
strInfo += configname + nl;
}
strInfo += "Summary Info" + nl;
string[] summaryNames =
Enum.GetNames(typeof(swSummInfoField_e));
foreach (string summaryName in summaryNames)
{
int sumID = (int)Enum.Parse(typeof(swSummInfoField_e),
summaryName);
string summaryValue = swModel.get_SummaryInfo(sumID);

80

Starting SolidWorks Programming

strInfo += summaryName + ": " + summaryValue + nl;

}
textBox1.Clear();
textBox1.Text = strInfo;

Any here is the finished result when you run the code:

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Starting SolidWorks Programming

For VBA we do much the same thing; start by going to Insert->User

Form within the VBE. Then much like VS just drag a
CommandButton and a TextBox onto the form and from the
properties on the left, set the TextBox property MultiLine to True,
and change the Caption property of the button to whatever you
would like the button to say.

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Starting SolidWorks Programming

Now double-click the button to create the event handler for the click.
Like VS we will place all of our code in here, and modify the module
containing the main() function
to simply open our form.
Start by editing the Macro1 file
module by double-clicking it in
the Project Explorer.
Within the main() function
place the following code to

83

Starting SolidWorks Programming

open the form upon running of the macro.
Sub main()
UserForm1.Show
End Sub

If you left the form Name property as default, then it will be called
UserForm1. If you do not get the IntelliSense menu popping up
when you press the period key after its name and before typing
Show, then you have the wrong name, so check the name property
of the form in the properties of the form designer.
Below this main subroutine we can place the LastIndexOf function
we created earlier, or we can put this in the form code. I have placed
it below the main for clarity.
Function LastIndexOf(stringToSearch As String, searchFor As String) As
Integer
Dim iPos As Integer
Dim iTemp As Integer
iPos = -1
iTemp = 0
Do Until iPos = 0
If iPos = -1 Then iPos = 0
iPos = InStr(iPos + 1, stringToSearch, searchFor)
If iPos <> 0 Then iTemp = iPos
Loop

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Starting SolidWorks Programming

iPos = iTemp - 1
LastIndexOf = iPos
End Function

Now it s time to place all of our code for getting the information that
we wrote above into the event handler function of the button that
was created earlier, so that the information will be shown in the
textbox when the
user clicks the
button. To get
back to the coding
window with the
button event
handler just rightclick the
UserForm1 item in
the Project
Explorer and select
View Code.
VBA
Dim strInfo As String
Private Sub CommandButton1_Click()
Set swApp = GetObject("", "SldWorks.Application")
If swApp Is Nothing Then

85

Starting SolidWorks Programming

MsgBox "Error gettings SolidWorks Handle"
Exit Sub
End If
Set swModel = swApp.ActiveDoc
If swModel Is Nothing Then
MsgBox "Failed to get active document"
Exit Sub
End If
Dim fullname As String
Dim filenamewithext As String
Dim filelocation As String
AddToStr "File Information"
fullname = swModel.GetPathName()
AddToStr "Full Path: " & fullname
If fullname <> "" Then
filelocation = Left(fullname, LastIndexOf(fullname, "\"))
AddToStr "Directory: " & filelocation
filenamewithext = Right(fullname, Len(fullname) - Len(filelocation) - 1)
AddToStr "Filename: " & Left(filenamewithext,
LastIndexOf(filenamewithext, "."))
AddToStr "Extension: " & Right(fullname, Len(fullname) LastIndexOf(fullname, "."))
End If
AddToStr "Title: " & swModel.GetTitle()

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Starting SolidWorks Programming

AddToStr "File Type: " & swModel.GetType()
AddToStr "Read-only View: " & swModel.IsOpenedReadOnly()
AddToStr "View-only View: " & swModel.IsOpenedViewOnly()
AddToStr "Large Assembly Mode: " & swModel.LargeAssemblyMode
AddToStr "Material Name: " & swModel.MaterialUserName
AddToStr "Material ID: " & swModel.MaterialIdName
AddToStr "Configuration Names"
configNames = swModel.GetConfigurationNames()
Dim configname As Variant
For Each configname In configNames
AddToStr CStr(configname)
Next
AddToStr "Summary Information"
AddToStr "Title: " & swModel.summaryinfo(swSumInfoTitle)
AddToStr "Subject: " & swModel.summaryinfo(swSumInfoSubject)
AddToStr "Author: " & swModel.summaryinfo(swSumInfoAuthor)
AddToStr "Keywords: " & swModel.summaryinfo(swSumInfoKeywords)
AddToStr "Comment: " & swModel.summaryinfo(swSumInfoComment)
AddToStr "Saved By: " & swModel.summaryinfo(swSumInfoSavedBy)
AddToStr "Creation Date: " &
swModel.summaryinfo(swSumInfoCreateDate)
AddToStr "Save Date: " & swModel.summaryinfo(swSumInfoSaveDate)
AddToStr "Creation Date 2: " &
swModel.summaryinfo(swSumInfoCreateDate2)

87

Starting SolidWorks Programming

AddToStr "Save Date 2: " &
swModel.summaryinfo(swSumInfoSaveDate2)
TextBox1.Text = ""
TextBox1.Text = strInfo
End Sub
Sub AddToStr(info As String)
strInfo = strInfo & info & vbCr
End Sub

* Find the complete C#, VBA and VB.Net examples on the CD if you
have any troubles.

88

Working with Selected Objects

Identifying Selected Objects
Mating Selected Objects
Setting Material of Selected Objects
Manipulate Dimension
Selecting Objects

89

Working with Selected Objects

Another major need for any good SolidWorks programmer is the
ability to work with and manipulate the selected objects. And the
first task once you obtain the selection is to identify it, so you know
how to proceed.

Indentifying Selected Objects

When you run a macro or program and the user has previously
selected objects, you may wish to either clear them all so it doesnt
affect your program, or to use the selection. If you wish to clear the
selected objects you call:
C#
swModel.ClearSelection2(true);

VBA
swModel.ClearSelection2 True

Now, say you wanted to actually use the selected objects that the
user has picked to do something. We must identify each of these
selections and make sure that they are of the correct type, and in
some cases, even in the correct order. I am going to show you how to
identify the selected objects of an assembly, add a coincident mate
and then error check.
Start with the usual template or whichever one you please, and
connect to SolidWorks and get the active document as usual.
If we are to work with selections we must add another variable to our
program. Please this in the same location as the swApp and

90

Working with Selected Objects

swModel variables and call it swSelMgr (short for Selection
Manager), and make it of type SelectionMgr.
C#
SelectionMgr swSelMgr;

VBA
Dim swSelMgr As SelectionMgr

Next, after we have successfully acquired the active document, we

then get the SelectionManager of that document. We use this
object for getting all our information about and handles to the
selected objects.
C#
swSelMgr = (SelectionMgr)swModel.SelectionManager;

VBA
Set swSelMgr = swModel.SelectionManager

Now we must check that the active document is an assembly, and if

so, get the selected objects and check that they are of the correct
type. For this example we are only going to allow mating of Faces,
Edges and Vertices. We will create a better selection process later
using the Property Pages.

91

Working with Selected Objects

C#
if (swModel.GetType() != (int)swDocumentTypes_e.swDocASSEMBLY)
{
MessageBox.Show("Can only add mate in an assembly");
return;
}
if (swSelMgr.GetSelectedObjectCount2(-1) != 2)
{
MessageBox.Show("You must select 2 entities, no more, no less");
return;
}
else
{
int selID1 = swSelMgr.GetSelectedObjectType3(1, -1);
int selID2 = swSelMgr.GetSelectedObjectType3(2, -1);
if ((selID1 != (int)swSelectType_e.swSelEDGES && selID1 !=
(int)swSelectType_e.swSelFACES && selID1 !=
(int)swSelectType_e.swSelVERTICES)
|| (selID2 != (int)swSelectType_e.swSelEDGES && selID2 !=
(int)swSelectType_e.swSelFACES && selID2 !=
(int)swSelectType_e.swSelVERTICES))
{
MessageBox.Show("You must select only edges, faces or
vertices");
return;
}
}

92

Working with Selected Objects

Here we first check the type of document that is active. You have
seen this before so if you need an explanation return to the previous
chapter. Then we use a function of the acquired selection manager
called GetSelectionObjectCount2; this returns an integer value
representing the number of objects that are selected by the user.
Because we are doing a coincident mate we want exactly two.
Next we call another selection manager function called
GetSelectedObjectType3, which accepts one parameter which is
the selected object to get the type for. We get the type value for
each of the 2 selected items, and then check them against the
enumerator values for Faces, Edges and Vertices. If either of the two
objects is not one of the allowed selected type then we stop and
warn the user.
&& = AND
|| = OR

If we pass all of the above criteria we know we are in SolidWorks,

with an assembly open, and 2 entities selected. We could take this
further and check that the selected objects components are different
so we are not trying to mate an object to itself, but for now this will
do us.

93

Working with Selected Objects

Mating Selected Objects

All that is left to do now is attempt to apply a coincident mate
between the 2 selected entities and check for success.
If the operation succeeds, SolidWorks by default when
programmatically adding a mate does not deselect the selected
entities after, but the user operation does. So, in an attempt to act
more like an actual user mate procedure, we will deselect the entities
once the mate has been made.
int iErrors;
((AssemblyDoc)swModel).AddMate3(
(int)swMateType_e.swMateCOINCIDENT,
(int)swMateAlign_e.swMateAlignCLOSEST,
false, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, false,
out lErrors);
if (iErrors != (int)swAddMateError_e.swAddMateError_NoError)
{
MessageBox.Show("Error mating components: " +
((swAddMateError_e)iErrors).ToString());
}
else
{
swModel.ClearSelection2(true);
}

If you read the SolidWorks API help file for

AssemblyDoc::AddMate3 you will see that the only parameters that

94

Working with Selected Objects

matter for us are the first 3 and the last 2. After we cast our
ModelDoc2 swModel variable to an AssemblyDoc variable we can
use this function.
Mate Type, Mate Alignment, Flip, Positioning Only,
Error variable

We select the correct type and alignment from the enumerator

options the help file tells us about, tell it not to flip the components,
not to create a positioning-only mate, and we pass a variable for
storing our errors.
Once it has run we check for errors by comparing the resultant
variable with the swAddMateError_NoError value from the errors
enumerator, and if we have an error, convert it to a readable string
and display it.
Once you have done, test your program.
Doing this in VBA is exactly the same, only we would have to
manually state each error again for each enumerator value like
before as VBA cannot easily, if at all, convert enum to strings at
runtime.
VBA
Set swSelMgr = swModel.SelectionManager
If swModel.GetType() <> swDocumentTypes_e.swDocASSEMBLY Then
MsgBox "Can only add mate in an assembly"
Exit Sub
End If
If swSelMgr.GetSelectedObjectCount2(-1) <> 2 Then

95

Working with Selected Objects

MsgBox "You must select 2 entities, no more, no less"
Exit Sub
Else
Dim selID1 As Integer
Dim selID2 As Integer
selID1 = swSelMgr.GetSelectedObjectType3(1, -1)
selID2 = swSelMgr.GetSelectedObjectType3(2, -1)
If (selID1 <> swSelEDGES And selID1 <> swSelFACES And selID1
<> swSelVERTICES) Or (selID2 <> swSelEDGES And selID2 <>
swSelFACES And selID2 <> swSelVERTICES) Then
MsgBox "You must select only edges, faces or vertices"
Exit Sub
End If
End If
Dim iErrors As Long
swModel.AddMate3 swMateCOINCIDENT, swMateAlignCLOSEST,
False, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, False, iErrors
If iErrors <> swAddMateError_NoError Then
Dim errortext As String
errortext = Switch(iErrors = 0, "Error Unknown", iErrors = 2, "Incorrect
Mate Type", iErrors = 3, "Incorrect Alignment", iErrors = 4, "Incorrect
Selection", iErrors = 5, "Over Defined Assembly", iErrors = 6, "Incorrect
Gear Ratios")
MsgBox "Error mating component: " & errortext
Else
swModel.ClearSelection2 True
End If

96

Working with Selected Objects

In VBA, we have had to specify each error value and its
corresponding string value. For this we use a Switch statement; it
works by returning the variable after the first value that returns true.
So in this case, we check if iErrors = 0, if it does it returns the
variable after that, which is Error Unknown, if it is false, it carries
on until it finds one.

97

Working with Selected Objects

Settings Material of Selected Objects

As well as mating, you can do almost anything with the selected
objects. This quick example will show you that by selecting any edge,
face, vertex, plane, sketch or part itself, that we can find its
associated component, and set its material.
This code presumes you have already connected to SolidWorks, got
the active document and obtained the SelectionManager object,
and SolidWorks has an assembly already open and you have checked
that the user has pre-selected at least one object.
You know how to check for the number of selected objects and their
types now so I will just get down to the raw code of getting a handle
to the Component of the selected object, and setting its material.
C#
string materialDB = "solidworks materials.sldmat";
string material = "Ductile Iron";
for (int i = 1; i <= swSelMgr.GetSelectedObjectCount2(-1); i++)
{
Component2 comp =
(Component2)swSelMgr.GetSelectedObjectsComponent3(i, -1);
if (comp != null)
{
ModelDoc2 model = (ModelDoc2)comp.GetModelDoc();
if (model.GetType() == (int)swDocumentTypes_e.swDocPART)
((PartDoc)model).SetMaterialPropertyName2("", materialDB,
material);

98

Working with Selected Objects

}
}
swModel.EditRebuild3();

Firstly we specify the materials database to use; either a custom

database or the default SolidWorks database. Secondly we specify
the material from that library that we wish to set all selected parts
to.
Now we create a loop for every selected object. Within that loop we
firstly get the component that is associated with this selected object.
The GetSelectedObjectsComponent3 function accepts the
selection index, which we pass each time. All the function does is
simply jump up the feature tree until hitting a Component object, so
no matter what item or feature of a part you select, this function will
get its component.
Before we continue, we check the function actually returned one,
and then if did we get the ModelDoc2 object associated with that
component, as we cannot set a material value to a component, it has
to be to the document of the component (i.e. the part/assembly).
With a ModelDoc2 object to work with, it is just a case of checking its
type to make sure it is a part, and then setting its material properties
using SetMaterialPropertyName2. This function takes in the
configuration name, material database and material name. In this
example we pass a blank configuration name so it sets it in the active
configuration. And then finally with all selected items processed we
do a rebuild of the assembly to update the parts.

99

Working with Selected Objects

Doing this procedure in VBA is no different and due to the looseness
of the language it actually looks a bit simpler in comparison as we do
not need any casting.
VBA
Dim materialDB As String
Dim material As String
materialDB = "solidworks materials.sldmat"
material = "Ductile Iron"
Dim i As Integer
For i = 1 To swSelMgr.GetSelectedObjectCount2(-1)
Dim comp As Component2
Set comp = swSelMgr.GetSelectedObjectsComponent3(i, -1)
If Not comp Is Nothing Then
Dim model As ModelDoc2
Set model = comp.GetModelDoc()
If model.GetType() = swDocPART Then
model.SetMaterialPropertyName2 "", materialDB, material
End If
End If
Next
swModel.EditRebuild3

100

Working with Selected Objects

Manipulating Dimensions
One of the major features of any 3D software package is dimensions,
and even through altering them through code it as simple as 1-2-3,
here is a quick code snippet of how to double the value of the
selected dimension. Again, presuming you are up to the point of
having a working selection manager and the user has selected a
dimension.
C#
if (swSelMgr.GetSelectedObjectCount2(-1) == 0)
{
MessageBox.Show("You must select one or more objects");
return;
}
if (swSelMgr.GetSelectedObjectType3(1, -1) !=
(int)swSelectType_e.swSelDIMENSIONS)
{
MessageBox.Show("You must select a dimension");
return;
}
DisplayDimension dispDim =
(DisplayDimension)swSelMgr.GetSelectedObject6(1, -1);
Dimension dim = (Dimension)dispDim.GetDimension2(0);
if (dim.DrivenState !=
(int)swDimensionDrivenState_e.swDimensionDriving || dim.ReadOnly)
{

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Working with Selected Objects

MessageBox.Show("Dimension cannot be altered");
return;
}
double[] oldVals =
(double[])dim.GetSystemValue3((int)swInConfigurationOpts_e.swThisCo
nfiguration, null);
oldVals[0] *= 2;
int retVal = dim.SetSystemValue3(oldVals[0],
(int)swInConfigurationOpts_e.swThisConfiguration, null);
if (retVal != (int)swSetValueReturnStatus_e.swSetValue_Successful)
{
MessageBox.Show("Error setting dimension: " +
((swSetValueReturnStatus_e)retVal).ToString());
}
swModel.EditRebuild3();

We start by checking that the user has selected an item. If they have
we check that the selection is of type swSelDimensions before
proceeding to attempt to alter it.
Once we know we have a dimension selected, we get it using
GetSelectedObject6 and pass 1 as the index to retrieve the first
selected object, and just ignore any more after that.
In order to get and set dimension values we must get the actual
Dimension object, not the DisplayDimension that is retrieved by
the user selection. We use the DisplayDimension method

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Working with Selected Objects

GetDimension2 to achieve this; passing 0 into this function gets the
first chamfer dimension and 1 gets the second if you have multiple
dimension display. In this example we are working with single
dimensions, so just pass 0.
Next, we check that the dimension is not read-only or driven; else we
will not be able to alter it.
With everything OK up to this point, we now want to perform our
operation; double the original size. Firstly we start by getting the
system value, which is the actual fully evaluated value of the
dimension. If you have tolerances then you will retrieve multiple
dimensions, so you must loop them and handle them how you like,
but for now this example will only alter the first dimension.
To get the system value we use the Dimension function
GetSystemValue3, which takes two parameters; the first is the
configuration to get the value from, which is an enumerator, and the
second is the actual configuration names if we use the enumerator
value for specific configurations. In our example we do not need this
so we pass null. The return type is a double array (a variable
containing zero or more numbers) regardless of retrieving a single
value or multiple, so we set our double array variable to the result.
Now with the original values in an array, we access the first value in
that array and multiply it using the statement:
oldVals[0] *= 2;

Which could be written out the long way like this:

oldVals[0] = oldVals[0] * 2;

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Working with Selected Objects

With the value doubled we must now set this new value back to the
dimension. We do this with the equivalent function
SetSystemValue3. This however accepts a single double value not
an array, so we pass the first value of our array as the first parameter,
and then the enum for this configuration again, and null for the
configuration names. This function returns an error checking
enumerator value, so we retrieve this like any other function we have
checked before and then check it against the successful enum value.
If it is not successful something went wrong so we display the error
by casting the integer return value back to an enumerator value, and
then to a readable string.
Finally, with the dimension successfully altered or not, we do a
rebuild of the document.
This code will work on assemblies, parts and drawings, provided the
dimension is alterable.
The VBA is exactly the same except the usual lack of enum names,
and no need to cast any objects.
VBA
If swSelMgr.GetSelectedObjectCount2(-1) = 0 Then
MsgBox "You must select one or more objects"
Exit Sub
End If
If swSelMgr.GetSelectedObjectType3(1, -1) <> swSelDIMENSIONS
Then
MsgBox "You must select a dimension"
Exit Sub
End If

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Dim dispDim As DisplayDimension

Dim ddim As Dimension
Set dispDim = swSelMgr.GetSelectedObject6(1, -1)
Set ddim = dispDim.GetDimension2(0)
If ddim.DrivenState <> swDimensionDriving Or ddim.ReadOnly Then
MsgBox "Dimension cannot be altered"
Exit Sub
End If
Dim oldVals As Variant
oldVals = ddim.GetSystemValue3(swThisConfiguration, Nothing)
oldVals(0) = oldVals(0) * 2
Dim retVal As Integer
retVal = ddim.SetSystemValue3(oldVals(0), swThisConfiguration,
Nothing)
If retVal <> swSetValue_Successful Then
MsgBox "Error setting dimension"
End If
swModel.EditRebuild3

And there you have it! Hopefully by now you are getting the hang of
things. Once you know the basics such as casting objects to the
correct value in .Net languages, and retrieving enumerator values

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Working with Selected Objects

and checking them for errors and the likes, the procedure is pretty
much the same for all functions and properties.
The main problem with the SolidWorks API documentation is its lack
of explanations in regards to these topics, but now you know how to
convert enumerators, integers, double arrays, ModelDoc2 to any of
the 3 children AssemblyDoc, PartDoc and DrawingDoc, as well as
converting errors into messages and other techniques, you should be
well on your way.

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Working with Selected Objects

Selecting Objects
One more thing I would like to cover before we move on is how you
actually select objects within your code. Because there are many
different ways of doing this and it all comes down to your situation, I
will just list the single lines of code you use to select specific objects.
We will encounter some of them later in the book, but they are
simple enough to understand.

ModelDocExtension::SelectByID2
In order to select almost any object from any location, you can use
the universal SelectByID2 of ModelDocExtension of ModelDoc2,
where you pass the fully qualified name of the entity you would like
to select. This name is based on the location of the entity within the
ModelDoc2 object that you are calling the function from. The best
way to find your required ID name is to record a macro selecting the
part you would like.
The definition is as follows:
retval = ModelDocExtension.SelectByID2 ( Name, Type,
X, Y, Z, Append, Mark, Callout, SelectOption )

Name
Type
X, Y, Z
Append
Mark
Callout
SelectOption

String
String
Double
Boolean
Integer
Pointer
Enumerator (Integer)

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Working with Selected Objects

The Name is the fully qualified name of the object to select that I will
explain further in a second.
The Type is the string name of the type of entity you are going to
select. If you take a look at the help it will give you all of the types.
The X, Y and Z positions are used if you wish to select by position
instead of the name.
The Append is used to tell SolidWorks whether you intend to add
this selection to the currently already selected objects or not, and if
this exact object is already selected, whether to deselect it.
The Mark is used if we are setting marks to selections, which is
beyond the scope of this book.
The Callout is used mainly in add-ins and again is beyond this book.
Finally, the SelectOption is an enumerator of type
swSelectOption_e; you can basically pick either Default, or
Extensive.
In order to select anything by its ID, in most cases you need the fully
qualified name. In order to work out this name you must follow the
following format:
[Name]@[Feature Name]@[Part]-[InstanceID]@[TopLevel Assembly]/[SubAssembly]-[InstanceID]@[BottomLevel Assembly]

Omitting any field that you don't need. Here are a few examples:

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Working with Selected Objects

From an assembly, selecting a parts thickness dimension
Part.Extension.SelectByID2("Thickness@Sheet-Metal1@0Bracket1@MachineContainer", "DIMENSION", ...

Where
Thickness
Sheet-Metal1
Bracket-1
MachineContainer

=
=
=
=

Dimension name
Feature Name
Part Name & Instance ID
Assembly Name

The model used above was an assembly called MachineContainer

with a part within it called Bracket. That bracket was a sheet metal
part (hence the Sheet-Metal1 feature), with a dimension of the
sheet metal feature called Thickness. The -1 after the bracket is
because in assemblies you need a way to know which part to select if
there are multiple instances. The instance in SolidWorks is the
number after the part within the angled brackets (<>).

From an assembly, selecting a top-level planes offset

dimension from the top level
Part.Extension.SelectByID2("Web Thickness@Web Thickness
Offside@MachineContainer", "DIMENSION", ...

Where
WebThickness = Dimension name
Web Thickness Offset = Plane Name
MachineContainer = Assembly Name

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Working with Selected Objects

From an assembly, selecting a sub-assemblies parts
plane
Assembly->SubAssembly->SubAssembliesPart->PartsPlane

Part.Extension.SelectByID2("Front Centre@Generic 01CS-015-1@01

Bed Plate/Generic 01CP-035-1@Generic 01CS-015", "PLANE", ...

Where
Front Centre
Generic 01CS-015-1
01 Bedplate
/Generic 01CP-035-1
Generic 01CS-015

=
=
=
=
=

Feature Name (Plane)

Part Name & Instance ID
Top-Level Assembly
Sub-Assembly & Instance ID
Bottom-Level Assembly

The Part variable in all of these

examples is the ModelDoc2 object
acquired for the model that the title
states, such as From an assembly....
The best way to learn about this
function is trial and error, and to record
macros to select what you want and see
the results.

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Working with Selected Objects

Selecting specific objects
The alternate method to using the universal function is to use
specific functions for the object you wish to select. This could be an
annotation, a body, a component, an edge, a feature, a document
(assembly/part/drawing), a sketch etc...
Find below a list of methods to use for each type of object to select.
You should by now be able to figure out from the API reference, how
to pass the correct parameters. As for actually getting a handle to
the object in the first place; we will cover some of them in the next
chapter.
Annotation
Body
BreakLine
Component
Configuration
Edge Point
Entity
Feature
Sketch Contour
Sketch Hatch
Sketch Point
Sketch Segment

Annotation::Select3
Body2::Select2
BreakLine::Select
Component2::Select3
Configuration::Select2
EdgePoint::Select
Entity::Select4
Featur::Select2
SketchContour::Select2
SketchHatch::Select4
SketchPoint::Select4
SketchSegment::Select4

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Working with Selected Objects

Setting a Selection Filter

As you saw in the previous example we allowed the user to select
anything first, and then check there selection after. A much better
way is to limit the users selection beforehand, and then tell them to
select their objects, and then run the code. Unfortunately this is not
easy to demonstrate the natural flow of setting the selection filter,
getting the selection, and then once they have selected, carrying on
with your code. The following function is usually used in add-ins or
full-blown applications with a user interface. I intend to cover this
subject in the future perhaps on a dedicated add-ins book.
However, just for knowledge, in order to limit the users selection
you call the following function:
void SldWorks.SetSelectionFilter ( selType, state )

selType
state

Enumerator (swSelectType_e)
Boolean

The state variable determines whether or not to enable/disable that

selection, to allow or deny the user from selecting it. The selType is
an enumerator that can be stacked to select multiple options. An
example to enable the user to select bodies and edges would be:
C#
swApp.SetSelectionFilter(swSelectType_e.swSelFACES |
swSelectType_e.swSelEDGES);

VBA
swApp.SetSelectionFilter swSelFACES Or swSelEDGES

112

Property Manager Pages

Deriving the base class
Adding items to the Page
Responding to events

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Property Manager Pages

Many of you who have already attempted to create Property
Manager Pages from the provided documentation of SolidWorks
have probably not understood 90% of the code, but rather done
what the documentation has told you, accepted it as the way to
create a page, and modified the bits you want to work with in the
hopes that it will work. Am I correct?
Well now, prepare to go through step-by-step every stage of
creating a PMP in VBA and the .Net languages. I will take you
through each stage, explaining along the way the reason for every
part of the code, and how to do many things with a property
manager page.
You can treat PMPs more like forms in the way that you can have
your code working from events instead of loops and straight through
until completion. You can run some initialisation code, wait for the
user to select components and click a button, and then react to that.
Sound exciting? Lets get started.

Deriving the base class

In order to create a PMP we must first create a class. This class is
created based on the template of a PMP called an abstract class; this
means that before we can create a page we must create an object
(class) that has all the required properties and functions required by a
PMP. By deriving from this base PMP class, it ensures that our new
class has all of these required properties and methods. Think of it as
if you want to create a new car, called the SuperFly, you cannot start
by creating a new car with 3 square wheels, and no steering wheel.
You have got to follow certain rules such as having 3-4 wheels,
containing doors to get in, and having certain safety factors. These
rules would be put inside a base abstract class called Car for

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Property Manager Pages

example, to ensure that any car created will follow these basic rules.
We would derive our SuperFly car class from the base Car class, so
that it inherited, and was forced to follow, these base rules.
In the case of our Property Manager Page, we are going to create a
new page, called MyFirstPMP that is derived from the base PMP
class, which is actually called PropertyManagerPage2Handler5.
When you derive from a base class, your new class first needs to
state that it is deriving from that class, and secondly you must create
all of the functions that the base class asks you too. So, we are going
to create a new class, derive from the PMP base class, and specify all
of the required blank functions.
Start by creating a new project in.Net from the normal template with
the button to start the code, and go to the coding view. Add the
following using code:
using SWPublished;

This will allow us to access the base PMP class.

Now create a new class outside of the main form class but inside the
namespace, and call it MyFirstPMP. Now for the important part;
after the class name, but before the opening curly braces, place a
colon (:), followed by the name of the base class to derive from, in
this case PropertyManagerPage2Handler5.
Now we must implement all of the required functions of this base
class, luckily .Net provides a method to do this for us; right-click on
the base class name, and from the menu select Implement Interface
-> Implement Interface:
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Property Manager Pages

This will automatically generate you all of the required functions of

the base class. Trust me this is a life saver in cases like this with over
30 functions!
You will also notice that within each function there is one line of code
throwing an error to the system. This is inserted by default and when
the function is called it will throw a system error stating that the
function is not yet implemented. This is not the functionality we
want as we dont really care if some functions are not implemented.
So remove that line of code to be left with empty functions. The end
result looks like this:
C#
public class MyFirstPMP : PropertyManagerPage2Handler5
{
#region IPropertyManagerPage2Handler5 Members

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Property Manager Pages

public void AfterActivation(){}
public void AfterClose(){}
public int OnActiveXControlCreated(int Id, bool Status) { return
(int)swHandleActiveXCreationFailure_e.swHandleActiveXCreationFailure
_Cancel; }
public void OnButtonPress(int Id){}
public void OnCheckboxCheck(int Id, bool Checked){}
public void OnClose(int Reason){}
public void OnComboboxEditChanged(int Id, string Text){}
public void OnComboboxSelectionChanged(int Id, int Item){}
public void OnGroupCheck(int Id, bool Checked){}
public void OnGroupExpand(int Id, bool Expanded){}
public bool OnHelp(){}
public bool OnKeystroke(int Wparam, int Message, int Lparam, int
Id){}
public void OnListboxSelectionChanged(int Id, int Item){}
public bool OnNextPage(){}
public void OnNumberboxChanged(int Id, double Value){}
public void OnOptionCheck(int Id) { }
public void OnPopupMenuItem(int Id) { }
public void OnPopupMenuItemUpdate(int Id, ref int retval) { }
public bool OnPreview() { }
public bool OnPreviousPage() { }
public void OnSelectionboxCalloutCreated(int Id) { }
public void OnSelectionboxCalloutDestroyed(int Id) { }
public void OnSelectionboxFocusChanged(int Id) { }
public void OnSelectionboxListChanged(int Id, int Count) { }
public void OnSliderPositionChanged(int Id, double Value) { }
public void OnSliderTrackingCompleted(int Id, double Value) { }

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Property Manager Pages

public bool OnSubmitSelection(int Id, object Selection, int SelType, ref
string ItemText){}
public bool OnTabClicked(int Id){}
public void OnTextboxChanged(int Id, string Text) { }
public void OnUndo(){}
public void OnWhatsNew(){}
#endregion
}

I have moved the curly braces up to the same line instead of on new
lines to save space in the coding; it just makes for easier reading.
Some functions you have to add a return statement for as they
require feedback, but since we wont be using them in this book just
type what you see. I will explain some functions later on and explain
the return values and what they mean, but for now just accept what
is written and write your code the same.
The #region and #endregion are Visual Studio styling tags, they are
nothing to do with the program code and do not get compiled when
you create your program. Their function is to tidy up your code.
Anything within the #region/#endregion block can be expanded
and collapsed using the + and box to the left of the #region tag.
This is very useful when your code gets long in order to keep it tidy.
Before we move on, lets create the same coding but in VBA. Start by
creating the usual VBA template that connects to SolidWorks, and
acquires the active document. Then leave the main function like that
for now.

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Property Manager Pages

Go to Insert->Class Module to insert a new class coding file. Open
up this class in the coding window if not already, by expanding the
Class Module folder and double-clicking the Class1 file. This should
display a blank file in the coding window.
Before we start writing our code in here let me explain exactly where
we are now; if this were C#, we would effectively be within the
following code block:
public class MyFirstPMP :
PropertyManagerPage2Handler5
{ // We are here! }

The slight difference in VBA is that although we are effectively within

the class when typing our code in the coding window, we do not
specify the base class outside of the braces (because there arent
any), but inside the class. So, inside our class file code we now want
to start by letting it know we are deriving from the
PropertyManagerPage2Handler5 base class. Place this code at the
first line of your class file:
VBA
Implements PropertyManagerPage2Handler5

Now, unlike .Net languages VBA does not have the power to
automatically create all of the required base functions for us, but
dont panic! It does have a semi-automated method. In the coding
window, notice the 2 drop-down boxes right above the first line of
code. The one on the left is the Object Box, and the one on the right
is the Procedures/Events Box.

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Property Manager Pages

Procedures is yet another word for a function or a method or a
subroutine; each language uses its own term but they all mean
exactly the same, unless you want to get pedantic and state that a
subroutine should not return a value whereas all others can, but I
wasnt going to say anything.

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Property Manager Pages

Creating the base functions in VBA
OK, so how do we semi-automatically create all of the required
functions of our base class? Fairly easily; drop down the Object Box
above your code to list all of the objects that are related to this class.
Select the base class PropertyManagerPage2Handler5.

This will populate the Procedures Box to the right, and have inserted
a single function for you.
Private Sub
PropertyManagerPage2Handler5_OnClose(ByVal Reason As
Long)
End Sub

What has happened here is that whenever you select an item from
the Procedure Box to the right, VBA will create an empty function
for that item if it doesnt exist, and because by selecting the base
class from the Object Box populates the Procedure Box to the right,
it has selected the first item in its new list by default, and so create
an empty function for it.

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Property Manager Pages

Now we need an empty procedure for all of the base class functions
for this to work so from the Procedure Box just go through one by
one and select each and every item in the list.

Once you have selected an item it will turn bold indicating there is
already a function for it, so selecting it again will just take you to it.
Select all items so they are all bold and then you will have the
following code:

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Property Manager Pages

VBA
Implements PropertyManagerPage2Handler5
Private Sub PropertyManagerPage2Handler5_AfterActivation()
End Sub
Private Sub PropertyManagerPage2Handler5_AfterClose()
End Sub
Private Function
PropertyManagerPage2Handler5_OnActiveXControlCreated(ByVal Id As
Long, ByVal Status As Boolean) As Long
End Function
Private Sub PropertyManagerPage2Handler5_OnButtonPress(ByVal Id
As Long)
End Sub
Private Sub PropertyManagerPage2Handler5_OnCheckboxCheck(ByVal
Id As Long, ByVal Checked As Boolean)
End Sub
Private Sub PropertyManagerPage2Handler5_OnClose(ByVal Reason
As Long)
End Sub
Private Sub
PropertyManagerPage2Handler5_OnComboboxEditChanged(ByVal Id
As Long, ByVal Text As String)
End Sub

123

Property Manager Pages

Private Sub
PropertyManagerPage2Handler5_OnComboboxSelectionChanged(ByVa
l Id As Long, ByVal Item As Long)
End Sub
Private Sub PropertyManagerPage2Handler5_OnGroupExpand(ByVal Id
As Long, ByVal Expanded As Boolean)
End Sub
................................................................................
................................................................................
Private Function
PropertyManagerPage2Handler5_OnSubmitSelection(ByVal Id As Long,
ByVal Selection As Object, ByVal SelType As Long, ItemText As String)
As Boolean
End Function
Private Function PropertyManagerPage2Handler5_OnTabClicked(ByVal
Id As Long) As Boolean
End Function
Private Sub
PropertyManagerPage2Handler5_OnTextboxChanged(ByVal Id As
Long, ByVal Text As String)
End Sub

124

Property Manager Pages

I have cut out the middle code as I am sure you get the point. With
our new class created we are ready to create a new instance of it (a
variable of it), and then call a function of the class to tell it to show.
In .Net we must first add another function to our PMP class; add the
following function before all of the base class functions:
C#
public void Show(SldWorks.SldWorks swApp)
{
}

Now we can call this function from our main function that connects
to SolidWorks. Go back to the main function of our code (the place
where we connected to SolidWorks, in .Net this is usually the button
click event). In our main function, after we have got the active
document, we want to create a new instance of our class and call a
method to tell it to initialise and show the PMP.
C#
MyFirstPMP myPMP = new MyFirstPMP();
myPMP.Show(swApp);

What this does is create a new variable of type MyFirstPMP, which is

the name of our PMP class we created previously. The instance of
this class (the variable) is called myPMP, call it whatever you want.
We then assign the variable as a new instance of our class. Finally we
call the instances function that we just declared in the class called

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Property Manager Pages

Show; this will run whatever code we place within the Show function
of our class and pass in the active SolidWorks Application variable.
As far as our main code is concerned we are now done, all that
remains is to do something with our Property Manager Page. But
before we do that, lets run over the VBA coding too.
Open the class module code. After the first line:
VBA
Sub Show(Dim swApp As SldWorks.SldWorks)
End Sub

We can call this function from our main function that connects to
SolidWorks. Back to the main function in our main module, after we
have acquired the active document, we want to create a new
instance of our class and call the Show function.
By default our class is called Class1. To find out the name of the
class, single-click the class module file in the Project Explorer and
look at the Property Window below it. The field (Name) is the name
of the class; alter this to MyFirstPMP, and press enter.

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Property Manager Pages

Now go back to our main module and after we acquired the active
document, place the following code:
VBA
Dim myPMP As MyFirstPMP
Set myPMP = New MyFirstPMP
myPMP.Show swApp

What this does is create a new variable of type MyFirstPMP, which is

the name of our PMP class we created previously. The instance of
this class (the variable) is called myPMP, call it whatever you want.
We then assign the variable as a new instance of our class. Finally we
call the instances function that we just declared in the class called
Show; this will run whatever code we place within the Show function
of our class.
We are now ready to run the project, however this will not do
anything yet as we have not created anything to display.

127

Property Manager Pages

Adding items to the Page

So what we have so far is a macro or program that will be run on start
or at the press of a button, that will create a new instance of our PMP
class, and call a function within it called Show. What we need to do is
focus our attention on the actual PMP class, in correctly initialising it,
adding items to the page, and making sure it all works as expected.
To start with, let me first explain something; although I have been
describing the class as deriving from a Property Manager Page base
class for ease of understanding, in truth it is actually a Property
Manager Page Handler class. The difference is that our PMP handler
class handles Property Manager Pages, it is not one itself. So our first
task is to create an actual instance of a PMP. The reason we have had
to create a handler class is to actually handle events that come back
from our pages, such as clicking a button, changing a dropdown box,
opening and closing etc... We could have just created a PMP directly
and shown it, but we would not have been able to handle anything it
does, so it would be as useful as a candle in a rainstorm.
By creating a new Page within our handler class, we are
automatically fed back all events from the page to our base class
functions we created earlier by passing the actual class we call the
creation function from into that function as a parameter. You will see
this later.
An example of the event-driven feedback would be that when the
Page is first created we get informed of this through the
AfterActivation function, and when they close the PMP we are again
informed by the OnClose and AfterClose functions. You will see the
benefits of this event-driven class soon.

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Property Manager Pages

Lets start by creating the variables that we require such as the actual
Page, a single Group and a Label so that we can see something on
the page to begin with. Once we have done this and we know that
our page is working we will go on to create some more advanced and
useful pages.
Add the following variables to the MyFirstPMP class, at the top of
the class:
C#
PropertyManagerPage2
PropertyManagerPageGroup
PropertyManagerPageLabel

pmPage;
pmGroup;
pmLabel;

int idGroup = 0;
int idLabel = 1;

The pmPage is a variable for a Page. The pmGroup is a group box

object of a page, and the pmLabel is a simple text label on the form.
You will see these later. The idGroup and idLabel variables are
created and set to unique numbers, any you decide, as they are
simply used for the page to identify its controls as unique.
Now in the Show function we will create a few more variables ready
for use in a second:
C#
int pageoptions =
(int)(swPropertyManagerPageOptions_e.swPropertyManagerOptions_Ok
ayButton |

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Property Manager Pages

swPropertyManagerPageOptions_e.swPropertyManagerOptions_Cancel
Button |
swPropertyManagerPageOptions_e.swPropertyManagerOptions_Locked
Page);
int groupoptions =
(int)(swAddGroupBoxOptions_e.swGroupBoxOptions_Expanded |
swAddGroupBoxOptions_e.swGroupBoxOptions_Visible);
int iErrors = 0;
int controloptions;
short controltype;
short controlalign;

The first variable pageoptions is the combination of enumerator

values we are going to use when creating our page. These
enumerators specify the options and type of page we create. The
complete list of page options is as follows:

swPropertyManagerOptions_OkayButton
This adds an OK button to the top of the page

swPropertyManagerOptions_CancelButton
This adds a cancel button to the top of the page

swPropertyManagerOptions_LockedPage
This prevents the page from automatically closing if the user tries to
edit the part, or select an object, or change to another document
etc...

swPropertyManagerOptions_CloseDialogButton
This has no use for us.
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Property Manager Pages

swPropertyManagerOptions_MultiplePages
This property is set to show the previous/next page buttons if you
create multiple pages.

swPropertyManagerOptions_PushpinButton
This shows the pushpin button.

swPropertyManagerOptions_PreviewButton
This shows a default Preview button. The benefit of this is that a
LockedPage option will treat this button specially, and won't close
the page on click.

swPropertyManagerOptions_DisableSelection
This prevents the user from selecting any models in the document.

swPropertyManagerOptions_WhatsNew
This shows a What's New button.

swPropertyManagerOptions_AbortCommand
This forces any current command in progress such as mating to be
aborted when the page gets displayed.

swPropertyManagerOptions_UndoButton
This shows the user an undo button, and calls the OnUndo function
when clicked.

swPropertyManagerOptions_CanEscapeCancel
This allows the user to exit the Page by pressing escape. This is not
work if your page has a selection box.

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swPropertyManagerOptions_HandleKeystrokes
This sets the page up to handle all keystrokes, which get sent to the
OnKeystroke function for you to handle.

swPropertyManagerOptions_IsDragDropCmd
Allows drag-dropping on page.

For our purpose we just want to show the OK and Cancel Buttons,
and lock the page.
The groupoptions variable stores the options for our group box we
will create later. Again this is an enumerator like the page options,
but with far fewer options; whether the group is visible or not, if it is
expanded, and if it has a checkbox and whether that checkbox is
checked or not. For our example we simply show the group box and
make it expanded.
The other variables will come into play in a minute. Now it is time to
create the actual page:
C#
pmPage =
(PropertyManagerPage2)swApp.CreatePropertyManagerPage("My First
PMP", pageoptions, null, ref iErrors);

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CreatePropertyManagerPage
In order to create and setup a new PropertyManagerPage object we
must call the CreatePropertyManagerPage function of the
SolidWorks Application object, in our case the swApp object. You
can create PMPs without any documents open, but you must have a
document open before you can display one.
The CreatePropertyManagerPage function looks like this:
retval = SldWorks.CreatePropertyManagerPage ( title,
Options, handler, errors )

The title is a string value that is shown in the title of the page;
this is the white writing that appears on the blue-background for
windows such as the Mate window, or the Dimension Property
Window.
The Options are the options we have just been over regarding
what buttons and styles to apply.
The handler is a handle (think of it as a link) to the class that
should receive the feedback events, but in order to receive these
feedbacks our program has to be run in the same memory space
as SolidWorks, and for .Net that means we must create a add-in;
stand-alone applications cannot receive these feedbacks, so we
pass null instead.
What this means is that our .Net examples here will not actually
receive any feedback to any of the functions we have declared in
our class such as AfterActivation or OnClose etc... Advanced
add-ins is a dedicated topic that could take a whole book to
explain in itself.

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For now we will stick to creating the pages with .Net just to show
you how it is done, and then move onto VBA (which is run in the
same memory space as SolidWorks) to handle feedbacks.
The errors is the usual error variable we pass in as a reference
and read back after the check for errors:
C#
if (iErrors !=
(int)swPropertyManagerPageStatus_e.swPropertyManagerPage_Okay)
{
MessageBox.Show("Failed to create page: " +
((swPropertyManagerPageStatus_e)iErrors).ToString());
return;
}

You should recognise and understand this error checking routine by

now.
With the page successfully created, we will go ahead and set a
message to be displayed in yellow at the top of the page, and add a
group, and then finally add a label inside the group and show the
page.
C#
pmPage.SetMessage3("Welcome to my first PMP",
(int)swPropertyManagerPageMessageVisibility.swImportantMessageBox
,
(int)swPropertyManagerPageMessageExpanded.swMessageBoxMaintai
nExpandState, "My Caption");

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pmGroup =
(PropertyManagerPageGroup)pmPage.AddGroupBox(idGroup, "My
groupbox", groupoptions);
controloptions =
(int)(swAddControlOptions_e.swControlOptions_Enabled |
swAddControlOptions_e.swControlOptions_Visible);
controltype =
(int)swPropertyManagerPageControlType_e.swControlType_Label;
controlalign =
(int)swPropertyManagerPageControlLeftAlign_e.swControlAlign_Indent;
pmLabel = (PropertyManagerPageLabel)pmGroup.AddControl(idLabel,
controltype, "My label", controlalign, controloptions, "My tip");
pmPage.Show();

We start by setting the page message. This will appear at the top of
the page and is usually used for a brief description of what is going
on. The function to do this is called SetMessage3, of the
PropertyManagerPage object. You do not have to call this function
and if you chose not to then the PMP will simply not display this
standard message box.
In this example we are going to set it to show you what it looks like:

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Property Manager Pages

SetMessage3
We use this function to set a top message of a page.
retval = PropertyManagerPage2.SetMessage3 ( Message,
Visibility, Expanded, Caption )

The Message variable is literally the message to display.

The next two options, Visibility and Expanded are again
enumerators for the styling and visibility of the message box.
Play around with changing these values to see the results.
The Caption is the title of the message box.

AddGroupBox
Once we set this message, we then create a new group, adding it to
the pmPage page. The function is as follows:
retval = PropertyManagerPage2.AddGroupBox ( Id,
Caption, Options )

The Id is a unique number to identify the control by.

The Caption is the title of the group box.
The Options is an enumerator specifying the style and visibility
of the control.
We pass in the id value we specified previously, which is simply a
unique number to identify the control by, this can be anything. The
ID will not denote the position on the page of the control; the order
in which you add the controls will be the order in which they are laid
out.
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Property Manager Pages

We then pass in the groupoptions variable we specified earlier for
the group box so that it is visible and by default expanded not
collapsed.
With the group box create we then add a label inside the group box
be calling the general AddControl function. This function is available
from any PropertyManagerPage object and any
PropertyManagerPageGroup object.
In this example, we do not add the label to the pmPage object, but
instead we add it to the group we just created. Because every other
control other than a page or a group box is added using a unique
AddControl function.

AddControl
The AddControl function looks like this:
retval = PropertyManagerPage2.AddControl ( Id,
ControlType, Caption, LeftAlign, Options, Tip )

The ID is the id we specified early.

The ControlType is the enumerator option for the type of control
we are adding.
The Caption is the text that will be displayed in the control.
The LeftAlign and Options are again enumerators for styling,
state and visibility.
And, the Tip is the text that will be displayed in a tooltip if the
user hovers over the control. This is usually a brief description or
help.
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Property Manager Pages

We pass in our unique ID for the ID, and the enumerator for the
Label type. The other two enumerators we specify are for the
alignment of the control, and the visibility and state; these options
are self explanatory so just play around with them if you wish to see
the difference.
By calling the pmGroups AddControl function instead of the
pmPages AddControl function we add the label to the group not
the page.
Finally, we call the pages Show function to display the page to the
user. Compile your code and give it a go. You should see the
following results.

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Property Manager Pages

You can continue to add other controls and play around with the
PMPs in .Net, but unless you plan on creating an add-in then you
cannot really do much with them. Personally, I find very little use in
PMPs when using .Net as you have the entire power of the .Net
framework and a programming language at your disposal to get user
information or display to them whatever you like. Thats not to say
PMPs dont have their place.
Lets carry on exploring them but using VBA, as this will allow us to
quickly and easily handle the events back from the page. I will not
explain the coding that has already been explained in the .Net
version as the principles are all the same.
First, lets add the items to the page in VBA just like we have done in
.Net.

In the MyFirstPMP class, before all of the functions but after the
Implements PropertyManagerPage2Handler5 line, place the
following variables:
VBA
Dim pmPage As PropertyManagerPage2
Dim pmGroup As PropertyManagerPageGroup
Dim pmLabel As PropertyManagerPageLabel
Dim idGroup As Integer
Dim idLabel As Integer
Dim lErrors As Long

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Property Manager Pages

Dim pageoptions As Integer
Dim groupoptions As Integer
Dim controloptions As Integer
Dim controltype As Integer
Dim controlalign As Integer

Those are the only variables we need for now to get our example up
and running.
Go to the Show function we created and add the following code.
This code will create a new page and set it to the variable pmPage,
then give the page a message and add a group and label.
VBA
Sub Show()
lErrors = 0
idGroup = 0
idLabel = 1
pageoptions = swPropertyManager_CancelButton +
swPropertyManager_OkayButton +
swPropertyManagerOptions_LockedPage
groupoptions = swGroupBoxOptions_Expanded +
swGroupBoxOptions_Visible

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Property Manager Pages

Set pmPage = swApp.CreatePropertyManagerPage("My First PMP",
pageoptions, Me, lErrors)
If lErrors = swPropertyManagerPage_Okay Then
pmPage.SetMessage3 "Hello World! This is my first PMP",
swImportantMessageBox, swMessageBoxMaintainExpandState,
"Important Message"
Set pmGroup = pmPage.AddGroupBox(idGroup, "My Group",
groupoptions)
controltype = swControlType_Label
controlalign = swControlAlign_Indent
controloptions = swControlOptions_Enabled +
swControlOptions_Visible
Set pmLabel = pmGroup.AddControl(idLabel, controltype, "My Label",
controlalign, controloptions, "My Tip")
pmPage.Show
Else
MsgBox "Error creating Property Manager Page"
End If
End Sub

As you can see this is identical to the .Net version, just with the
syntax of VBA. The advantage we have here however is that notice
the call we have made to CreatePropertyManagerPage:

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Set pmPage = swApp.CreatePropertyManagerPage("My
First PMP", pageoptions, Me, lErrors)

Now compare that with the .Net version, and see the difference:
pmPage =
(PropertyManagerPage2)swApp.CreatePropertyManagerPag
e("My First PMP", pageoptions, null, ref iErrors);

In .Net, remember I said we have to be running in-process of

SolidWorks to handle event feedbacks, and for that reason we
passed null as the handle to the class to handle these events?
Probably not, but anyway that is what I said.
Now if you look at the VBA function, we have passed a variable
called Me; this is a special variable that can be used to reference the
current object that the code resides in. Because we are calling this
CreatePropertyManagerPage function from within the MyFirstPMP
class, whatever instance of the class we are within, that is what the
Me variable refers to, so in this case we are actually passing a
reference to our myPMP instance of the class we created, and called
this Show function from:
Dim myPMP As MyFirstPMP
Set myPMP = New MyFirstPMP
myPMP.Show swApp

Because we have passed an instance of our class as the handle to this

page, it means that any events triggered by this page will be fed back
and handled by our myPMP class, which contains all of those
functions we created at the start, such as OnClose, AfterActivation
and OnKeystroke etc... So now, to test that we are handling these

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events, we will start by placing a simple message box in the OnClose,
AfterClose, and AfterActivation event functions:
VBA
Private Sub PropertyManagerPage2Handler5_AfterActivation()
MsgBox "Activated"
End Sub
Private Sub PropertyManagerPage2Handler5_AfterClose()
MsgBox "Closed"
End Sub
Private Sub PropertyManagerPage2Handler5_OnClose(ByVal Reason
As Long)
MsgBox "Closing"
End Sub

Run your macro and you will notice that the AfterActivation event
fires before the PMP is visible; this is because it receives activation
control as soon as the message process starts for that control, not
when it gets drawn (displayed).
Now close the PMP using the X button, and you will see that the
OnClose message box appears before the PMP is closed, and the
AfterClose event fires once it is destroyed.
Good, so lets create something useful and start handling those
events!

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Property Manager Pages

Responding to Events
In order to best demonstrate working with events and responding to
them we are going to create a new PMP that has a selection tool in it
that limits the user to selecting faces. From there we are then going
to change the colour of those selected faces to Red, Blue or Green
based on the button the user clicks.
We will begin by creating a new macro, connecting to SolidWorks,
getting the Active Document, and creating a new instance of a class
that implements PropertyManagerPage2Handler5; so basically we
are creating an identical copy of the macro we have just created.
The first modification to add a check in the main function that the
active document is not a drawing; after the check for an active
document place the following:
VBA
If swModel.GetType() = swDocDRAWING Then
MsgBox "Cannot set faces in a drawing"
Exit Sub
End If

Next we need to change the items that we create; instead of creating

a group and a label, we create a selection box and 3 buttons. We start
by specifying the usual variables and the new ones for our buttons
and selection control:
VBA
Dim pmPage As PropertyManagerPage2
Dim pmGroup As PropertyManagerPageGroup

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Dim pmSelection As PropertyManagerPageSelectionbox
Dim pmButtonRed As PropertyManagerPageButton
Dim pmButtonGreen As PropertyManagerPageButton
Dim pmButtonBlue As PropertyManagerPageButton
Dim idGroup As Integer
Dim idSel As Integer
Dim idButtonRed As Integer
Dim idButtonGreen As Integer
Dim idButtonBlue As Integer
Dim lErrors As Long
Dim pageoptions As Integer
Dim groupoptions As Integer
Dim controloptions As Integer
Dim controltype As Integer
Dim controlalign As Integer
Dim filters(0) As Long

You will recognise all of these variables, except two new types for
the Selectionbox and the Buttons. There is nothing really to explain,
there are no different options for the buttons than there was for the
label control, and for creating the selection box. You will see how to
set the Selectionbox options up in a minute.
The filters variable is used to store selection filter data, it will be
explained later.

145

Property Manager Pages

Now inside the Show function we want to create the usual page,
settings the initial variables, and checking for success before
attempting to add our controls. Here is the code we should have so
far:
VBA
lErrors = 0
idGroup = 1
idSel = 2
idButtonRed = 3
idButtonGreen = 4
idButtonBlue = 5
pageoptions = swPropertyManager_CancelButton +
swPropertyManager_OkayButton +
swPropertyManagerOptions_LockedPage
groupoptions = swGroupBoxOptions_Expanded +
swGroupBoxOptions_Visible
Set pmPage = swApp.CreatePropertyManagerPage("FunFaces",
pageoptions, Me, lErrors)
If lErrors = swPropertyManagerPage_Okay Then
ADD OUR ITEMS TO THE PAGE HERE
Else
MsgBox "Error creating Property Manager Page"
End If

146

Property Manager Pages

Where I have placed the comment we will add our new controls. We
start by setting the pages message up to tell the user what our macro
is going to do:
VBA
pmPage.SetMessage3 "Select any faces you would like and then
click a color button to change the face colors!",
swImportantMessageBox, swMessageBoxMaintainExpandState,
"Important Message"

Adding a Selection Box & Buttons

Next we want to add our group and selection box:
VBA
Set pmGroup = pmPage.AddGroupBox(idGroup, "Select faces",
swGroupBoxOptions_Expanded + swGroupBoxOptions_Visible)
Set pmSelection = pmGroup.AddControl(idSel,
swControlType_Selectionbox, "Select faces", swControlAlign_Indent,
swControlOptions_Visible + swControlOptions_Enabled, "")

Simple enough wasnt it? Finally we add 3 buttons with a name of

Red, Green and Blue respectively:
VBA
controltype = swControlType_Button
controlalign = swControlAlign_Indent

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Property Manager Pages

controloptions = swControlOptions_Enabled +
swControlOptions_Visible
Set pmButtonRed = pmPage.AddControl(idButtonRed, controltype,
"Red", controlalign, controloptions, "")
Set pmButtonGreen = pmPage.AddControl(idButtonGreen,
controltype, "Green", controlalign, controloptions, "")
Set pmButtonBlue = pmPage.AddControl(idButtonBlue, controltype,
"Blue", controlalign, controloptions, "")

And as usual, once we have created our controls, we want to display

our PMP:
VBA
pmPage.Show

Setting up Selection Filters

Before we try our macro, lets first setup the selection filters;
anywhere after the pmSelection object has been created, place the
following code:
VBA
filters(0) = swSelFACES
pmSelection.SingleEntityOnly = True
pmSelection.Height = 50
pmSelection.SetSelectionFilters filters

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Property Manager Pages

pmSelection.SetStandardPictureLabel swBitmapLabel_SelectFace

The first line sets our Long array variable filters first and only item to
swSelFACES, which means we are only allowing faces to be
selected. This value is from the swSelType_e enumerator.
Next, we set up the selection mode to single-select, the height of the
selection box to 50 pixels, and the filter we just defines to the
selection box.
The last line sets the icon to use for this control. This function can be
called from any control you add such as a label, button, drop-down
list and all others. There are many icons:
swBitmapLabel_LinearDistance
swBitmapLabel_AngularDistance
swBitmapLabel_SelectEdgeFaceVertex
swBitmapLabel_SelectFaceSurface
swBitmapLabel_SelectVertex
swBitmapLabel_SelectFace
swBitmapLabel_SelectEdge
swBitmapLabel_SelectFaceEdge
swBitmapLabel_SelectComponent
swBitmapLabel_Diameter
swBitmapLabel_Radius
swBitmapLabel_LinearDistance1
swBitmapLabel_LinearDistance2
swBitmapLabel_Thickness1
swBitmapLabel_Thickness2
swBitmapLabel_LinearPattern
swBitmapLabel_CircularPattern
swBitmapLabel_Width
swBitmapLabel_Depth
swBitmapLabel_KFactor

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Property Manager Pages

swBitmapLabel_BendAllowance
swBitmapLabel_BendDeduction
swBitmapLabel_RipGap
swBitmapLabel_SelectProfile

With using a selection box, we can place custom rules on whether to

allow certain selections, such as dont allow fillets over 5mm or dont
allow more than 5 items etc... This is pretty cool power to have, but
for our example we simply accept any selection that passes the
normal selection filter we set up of faces. So, in order to bypass the
custom rules we must pass True every time a selection is made in the
OnSubmitSelection function:
VBA
Private Function
PropertyManagerPage2Handler5_OnSubmitSelection(ByVal Id As Long,
ByVal Selection As Object, ByVal SelType As Long, ItemText As String)
As Boolean
PropertyManagerPage2Handler5_OnSubmitSelection = True
End Function

As you can see this function does one thing; return true all the time,
allowing any selection that passes our filter to be selected and added
to the selection box.
Now you are ready to run the macro, give it a go and select a face,
then close the page.

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You will notice that clicking the buttons
does nothing at the moment. That is
because we havent handled the event of
clicking the button. So lets do that now!

Getting Selection & Settings

Face Colours
When the user clicks any of the 3 buttons
we want to get the current selection, and
then set the face colour to the respective
buttons colour, and finally clear the
selection so that they can carry on.
It all happens in the OnButtonPress event
as you can probably figure out. Within the OnButtonPress function
we firstly want to identify which button was pressed and create a
variable for the colour. Once we have the colour variable everything
else is the same regardless of what button was pressed:
VBA
Private Sub PropertyManagerPage2Handler5_OnButtonPress(ByVal Id
As Long)
Dim r As Integer, g As Integer, b As Integer
r=g=b=0
If Id = idButtonRed Then r = 255
If Id = idButtonGreen Then g = 255
If Id = idButtonBlue Then b = 255

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Dim v As Variant
v = swModel.MaterialPropertyValues
swModel.SelectedFaceProperties RGB(r, g, b), v(3), v(4), v(5), v(6), v(7),
v(8), False, ""
swModel.ClearSelection2 (True)
End Sub

All we have done here is to create 3 variables for the red, green and
blue colours, set them all to 0, and then depending on which button
was pressed, set that specific colour value. With the RGB values set
we get the default part material properties then we set the selected
face properties to the colour we defined above, and finally clear the
selection so we can see the results.

152

Traversing
Traversing through an Assembly
Traversing through a Component
Displaying the results
Playing with Components and Features

153

Traversing
Traversing is the art of looping through every item in a list. By
traversing we are going to loop through every single component in
an assembly, later we will take it a step further and traverse though
all features of all of those components, and then after we are done
we will have some fun with .Net by creating a tree-view program and
adding some functionality to work with features and components.

Traversing through an Assembly

The basics of traversing an assembly are:-

Get the root component of the assembly

Get the children of that root component
For each child, check if it has any children
For each child of the child, repeat the loop

The way we create this loop so that the coding will traverse all
children of all children so we get every component in the assembly is
to create a function that accepts a Component2 object as a variable.
Within this function we check if the Component2 object passed in
has children, and if it has any, pass each childs Component2 back
into the function, so that child gets checked for children also. This
loop will continue for every child so long as there are children. This
loop will effectively pass over every single component in an
assembly. For now we will just display a message box each time we
pass over a component.
Later on we will actually mimic the SolidWorks feature tree list that
is displayed on the left.

154

Traversing
Start by creating the usual template and getting the active
document. Now add the following variables next to the swApp and
swModel variables:
C#
Configuration

swConf;

Component2

swRootComponent;

After the code where you get the active document, place the
following code to get the root component of the active document:
C#
swConf = (Configuration)swModel.GetActiveConfiguration();
swRootComponent = (Component2)swConf.GetRootComponent();

Before we can get components, we need to get a configuration, as

each configuration can have different components. We use the
ModelDoc2s function GetActiveConfiguration function to get the
current configuration, casting it to Configuration. With the active
configuration we then call the Configuration function
GetRootComponent to get our root component. Job Done!
Now it is time to loop through this component looking for children,
and then to loop through those children. After we have acquired the
root component, pass this root component into a function that will
then check that component for children:

155

Traversing
C#
TraverseComponent(swRootComponent);

Now let us create the actual function to simply check if the

component has children, and if it does pass each child back into this
function:
C#
private void TraverseComponent(Component2 component)
{
object[] children = (object[])component.GetChildren();
if (children.Length > 0)
{
foreach (Component2 comp in children)
{
TraverseComponent(comp, tn);
}
}
}

This function is simple enough; we first attempt to get all, if any, of

the components children. Then we check if it does have any children,
and if it does we pass each child back into this loop and repeat. We
have to cast the array return from GetChildren as an Object array
not a Component2 array, and then cast each object to a
Component2 within the foreach loop. If you attempt to cast the
returned array straight to a Component2 array it will fail.

156

Traversing
To show that we have passed over each component we will add a
message box showing the component title before the call to
TraverseComponent:
C#
MessageBox.Show(((ModelDoc2)comp.GetModelDoc()).GetTitle());

All we have done here is got the ModelDoc2 document associated

with the component, and then got its title.
Now for the same code in VBA; start with the usual template, adding
the following additional variables;
VBA
Dim swConf As Configuration
Dim swRootComponent As Component2

Then after getting the active document place the following:

VBA
Set swConf = swModel.GetActiveConfiguration()
Set swRootComponent = swConf.GetRootComponent()

This will get the root component as explain in the .Net version. Now
we call the TraverseComponent function:
VBA
TraverseComponent swRootComponent

157

Traversing
And here is the TraverseComponent function to do just the same as
the .Net version:
VBA
Sub TraverseComponent(component As Component2)
Dim children As Variant
children = component.GetChildren()
If UBound(children) > 0 Then
Dim i As Integer
For i = 1 To UBound(children)
MsgBox children(i).GetModelDoc().GetTitle()
TraverseComponent children(i)
Next
End If
End Sub

And that is all there is to it really. Using this form of loop we can get
access to all of the Component2 objects in an assembly and do what
we want with them. You will see some useful things to do later.

158

Traversing

Traversing through a Component

Now we have access to all of these components, the next thing that
would be handy is to then traverse these components for all of their
features.
The following code will show how to traverse a component. You can
place this code within the assembly traversal loop if you wish. I will
take you through creating a complete tree-view program next to see
this in use.
Within a component are features, and within those features can be
sub-features.
We will start by calling a function that accepts a Feature as a
parameter, a bit like the assembly component feature, that will loop
through all features:
C#
TraverseFeatures((Feature)comp.FirstFeature());

The comp object is a component we have acquired. If you place this

code within the assembly loop we made just we will loop every
component in an assembly. And here is the TraverseFeatures
function to loop all features:
C#
private void TraverseFeatures(Feature firstfeature, TreeNode tn)
{
Feature feat = firstfeature;

159

Traversing
while (feat != null)
{
MessageBox.Show(feat.Name);
feat = (Feature)feat.GetNextFeature();
}
}

As you can see this is much similar to the previous looping function,
however we only run through the top-level features. As I mentioned
earlier, features can have sub-features themselves, so before the
message box line, place the following line to call another function
that will loop all sub-features:
C#
TraverseSubFeatures(feat);

And the function to loop all sub-features will also loop itself for any
sub-features of sub-features, just like the assembly components
functions did, this way we get every single feature there is:
C#
private void TraverseSubFeatures(Feature feature, TreeNode node)
{
Feature subfeat = (Feature)feature.GetFirstSubFeature();
while (subfeat != null)
{
TraverseSubFeatures(subfeat, subtn);
subfeat = (Feature)subfeat.GetNextSubFeature();

160

Traversing
}
}

This looks identical to the previous function except instead of calling

GetNextFeature we call GetNextSubFeatue. Again within this
TraverseSubFeatures function you can place a message box call to
display the feature name.
Now for the VBA version; wherever you have a component object
you wish to traverse place the following function call:
VBA
TraverseFeatures (children(i).FirstFeature())

The children variable is an array of components from the previous

example, and we are calling the Component2 function FirstFeature
and passing it into the function TraverseFeatures. And here is the
TraverseFeatures function:
VBA
Sub TraverseFeatures(feature As feature)
Dim feat As feature
Set feat = feature
While Not feat Is Nothing
MsgBox feat.Name
TraverseSubFeatures feat

161

Traversing
Set feat = feat.GetNextFeature()
Wend
End Sub

This function loops through all features, starting with the feature
passed in. It shows a message box to the user with the name of the
current feature within the loop. It then calls the
TraverseSubFeatures function to loop through all sub-features:
VBA
Sub TraverseSubFeatures(feature As feature)
Dim feat As feature
Set feat = feature.GetFirstSubFeature()
While Not feat Is Nothing
MsgBox feat.Name
TraverseSubFeatures feat
Set feat = feat.GetNextSubFeature()
Wend
End Sub

This function is again identical to the .Net version so if you need an

explanation on whats going on here read over the .Net section.
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Traversing
And that covers that. We have now looped through every
component and every feature within an assembly. However, there is
a much better way to view all of these components and features
other than a message box to the user; through an actual tree-view
list just like in SolidWorks. That is what we are going to do next.

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Displaying the results

Taking what we have just learned and applying it to a new .Net
program, we are going to create a tree-view to display an
assembly/part tree-view list.
Begin by creating a new project from the normal template in your
desired .Net language. As well as the button in the form, we want to
add a new control; a tree-view.
Start by going into the Form Designer view by double-clicking the
Form1.cs file from the Solution Explorer, and then from the
Toolbox, drag a new TreeView control onto your form and size it
how you like.

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Traversing
Into the coding view; add the following variables below the typical
swApp and swModel variables:
C#
Configuration
Component2

swConf;
swRootComponent;

These will be used in a second. Now inside the button click event
function, after you have acquired the active document, you want to
do a check that we arent working with a drawing:
C#
if (swModel.GetType() == (int)swDocumentTypes_e.swDocDRAWING)
{
MessageBox.Show("Active document cannot be a drawing");
return;
}

Now we have an active document that is either a part or an assembly

we are ready to start traversing as usual, only this time instead of a
message box we want to add items to the TreeView control we just
created.
Before we do anything, we want to clear the current tree view list
before we start adding a new list:
C#
treeView1.Nodes.Clear();

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Traversing
Next get the root component:
C#
swConf = (Configuration)swModel.GetActiveConfiguration();
swRootComponent = (Component2)swConf.GetRootComponent();

We will start our tree view with the top item being the actual active
model, like it is in SolidWorks:
C#
TreeNode tn = treeView1.Nodes.Add(swModel.GetTitle());

The Nodes Add function adds a node to the parent node or top-level
TreeView control, and it returns the actual node added. Because we
will be using this as a reference to add our child components and
features to we store it in a variable called tn.
Next we want to call the TraverseFeatures function we created in
the last section, and to call the TraverseComponent function too.
The addition in this instance is we are passing in a TreeNode variable
as the second parameter. We will use this TreeNode variable and
add nodes to it.
C#
TraverseFeatures((Feature)swModel.FirstFeature(), tn);
if (swRootComponent != null)
TraverseComponent(swRootComponent, tn);

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Traversing
We do a check that the root component was acquired before we
traverse it. If we are in a part, then there is no root component.
Lets take a look at the modified TraverseComponent function
where we add each component to its parent tree node item:
C#
private void TraverseComponent(Component2 component, TreeNode
treeNode)
{
object[] children = (object[])component.GetChildren();
if (children.Length > 0)
{
foreach (Component2 comp in children)
{
TreeNode tn =
treeNode.Nodes.Add(((ModelDoc2)comp.GetModelDoc()).GetTitle());
TraverseFeatures((Feature)comp.FirstFeature(), tn);
TraverseComponent(comp, tn);
}
}
}

The only modification we have made here is removed the message

box code and instead add each child components title to the
TreeNode passed in. Then for each child, we loop its features and
child components, but instead passing it the components TreeNode
as the node to add any results too. This creates the list we are after.

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Traversing
Next is to place this same modification into the TraverseFeatures
function too, and to add another small check to prevent adding the
assemblies components as features as well as components:
C#
private void TraverseFeatures(Feature firstfeature, TreeNode tn)
{
Feature feat = firstfeature;
while (feat != null)
{
if (string.Compare(feat.GetTypeName2(), "Reference", true) == 0)
return;
TreeNode subtn = tn.Nodes.Add(":: " + feat.Name);
TraverseSubFeatures(feat, subtn);
feat = (Feature)feat.GetNextFeature();
}
}

The first thing we do is check that the features type is not a

reference. In assemblies the components within it report as features
as well as components; as a feature, components types return the
name Reference, so we check for this and ignore the features that
are references. If we removed this line of code we would get all of the
assemblies components added as single features, as well as
components.
If the feature is not a reference we then add it to the node passed in
to the function. For each feature we then loop through all sub-

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Traversing
features, again passing in the features TreeNode object as the node
to add results too. Finally here is the modified TraverseSubFeatures
function:
C#
private void TraverseSubFeatures(Feature feature, TreeNode node)
{
Feature subfeat = (Feature)feature.GetFirstSubFeature();
while (subfeat != null)
{
TreeNode subtn = node.Nodes.Add("::" + subfeat.Name);
TraverseSubFeatures(subfeat, subtn);
subfeat = (Feature)subfeat.GetNextSubFeature();
}
}

Nothing much to explain here really, other than we add a child

TreeNode to the TreeNode object passed into the function for each
sub-feature, and loop the function for all sub-features.
Try running your program. Click the button once you have an
assembly or part open and see as your results in the tree view. Once
you click the button it may take a few seconds to complete
depending on the size of your assembly.
Find the complete code listing below. The VB.Net example is also on
the accompanying CD as per-usual.

169

Traversing

170

Traversing

Playing with Components and Features

Now we have created a tree-view much like the SolidWorks one, it is
a brilliant time to have a play with these components and features.
We will start my making a small modification to the program we just
made so that we can reference any item in the tree view back to the
actual SolidWorks components and features. Add the following to
the using section:
C#
using System.Collections;

Add the following to the variables section:

C#
Hashtable

hashStore;

We will use this variable to store one reference to the TreeNode

object, and one to the corresponding SolidWorks Component,
ModelDoc2 or Feature.
After the code line where we clear the tree view list we also want to
initialise a new hash table, effectively clearing it at the same time,
ready for a fresh start:
C#
hashStore = new Hashtable();

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Traversing
A few more lines down after we add the first item to the tree view,
before traversing the root components, place the following code:
C#
hashStore.Add(tn, swModel);

What this does is add an item to our Hashtable; each item stores a
key, and a value. The key is used to lookup or find the value. Here
the tn variable is the TreeNode item we just added, and the value is
the actual swModel variable linked to our model. You will see how
we look the swModel back up later.
Inside the TraverseComponent function, right below the line where
we add the TreeNode again, add the same line as before, but this
time adding the component:
C#
hashStore.Add(tn, comp);

Inside the TraverseFeatures function, below the TreeNode code

line, just like before, add the following:
C#
hashStore.Add(subtn, feat);

And finally, in the TraverseSubFeatures function below the

TreeNode code add the following:

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Traversing
C#
hashStore.Add(subtn, subfeat);

All we have done here is every time we add any TreeNode to the
TreeView control we add a reference in the Hashtable to the tree
node item and the associated model, component or feature.

Linking the list with SolidWorks

The simplest task to perform on any component or feature is to
select it. What we will do is that every time the selection in our tree
view list is changed, we will select the corresponding object in
SolidWorks.
Start by going to the Form Designer, selecting the TreeView object
and going to its Events in the Property Window. Scroll down to the
AfterSelect entry and double-click it to add an event function for
every time the selection is changed.
This function will get called every
time the user selected an item
from our list. So we want to get
the currently selected item from
the tree view, and use that as the
key in our hash table to lookup
whatever component or feature
that item links back to. From
there we will have access to the
Component2 or Feature object
to do with as we please.

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Traversing
Inside the AfterSelect function place the following code:
C#
if (treeView1.SelectedNode == null)
return;
if (hashStore.Contains(treeView1.SelectedNode))
{
object link = hashStore[treeView1.SelectedNode];
if (treeView1.SelectedNode.Index != 0)
{
try
{
Component2 comp = (Component2)link;
comp.Select3(false, null);
}
catch
{
Feature feat = (Feature)link;
feat.Select2(false, -1);
}
}
}

We first check that we have an item in our list selected, and if so that
our hash table actually contains a link from the selected node
(although from our current code it always will). Then we acquire the
associated SolidWorks object be retrieving it from the hash table
passing in the selected node as the key. We then check if the
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Traversing
selected node is the first item, in which case it is the model we add in
the beginning. Because we cannot select the model itself we skip the
code if it is.
If the selected node is not the first node, then it will be either a
Component2 object or a Feature object, but because the object is a
COM object, we cannot simply test what type it is, so we use a
Try/Catch block. If casting the object to a Component2 object fails,
we know it is a Feature.
Once we have the desired object, we call its respective Select
function to select it. Run our program and click the button to fill the
list, then select some items from the list and watch in SolidWorks as
the object gets selected.

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Traversing
Pretty good hu? Thats not all. We are now going to add the ability to
toggle the suppression state of the components and features using a
right-click menu to our list. This can then be easily expanded to call
any function or do any task you would like on any component or
feature within an assembly or part.
Go back to the Form Designer and this time we are going to drag a
new ContextMenuStrip from the toolbar to the form.

You will then notice at the bottom of the Form Designer that you
have your newly created menu called ContextMenuStrip1. If you
single-click on this the menu designer will appear at the top of your
form. To add a new menu item you single-click the box where it
states Type Here, type the name of the menu, and press enter.
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Traversing
Add a new menu item called Toggle Suppression, and in order to
add an event function for OnClick, just double-click the menu item.

Before we continue, go back

to the Form Designer and
select the TreeView control.
We must associate our newly
create menu with this control
so that when the user rightclicks within it the menu
displays. In the Property
Window with the TreeView
control selected, for the
ContextMenuStrip property,
select your menu.

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Traversing
Now its time to implement our suppression function. Within the
event function for the menu click that we created a minute ago place
the following code. This is mostly identical with the previous code
but where the Select coding is, we replace it with the suppression
toggle code:
C#
if (treeView1.SelectedNode == null)
return;
if (hashStore.Contains(treeView1.SelectedNode))
{
object link = hashStore[treeView1.SelectedNode];
if (treeView1.SelectedNode.Index != 0)
{
try
{
Component2 comp = (Component2)link;
int state = comp.GetSuppression();
if (state ==
(int)swComponentSuppressionState_e.swComponentSuppressed)
state =
(int)swComponentSuppressionState_e.swComponentFullyResolved;
else
state =
(int)swComponentSuppressionState_e.swComponentSuppressed;
comp.SetSuppression2(state);
}

178

Traversing
catch
{
Feature feat = (Feature)link;
Boolean[] suppression =
(Boolean[])feat.IsSuppressed2((int)swInConfigurationOpts_e.swThisConf
iguration, null);
int state;
if (suppression[0])
state =
(int)swComponentSuppressionState_e.swComponentFullyResolved;
else
state =
(int)swComponentSuppressionState_e.swComponentSuppressed;
feat.SetSuppression2(state,
(int)swInConfigurationOpts_e.swThisConfiguration, null);
}
}
}

If the associated object is a component we call the GetSuppression

function to retrieve the current state of the component. Next, we
check if it is already suppressed; if it is, we set the new state to
unsuppressed, if it isnt we set it to suppressed.
With the state defined, we set it using the function SetSuppression2
function.
If the object is a feature, we call the Feature function IsSuppressed2,
which returns an array of suppression states for the feature in all

179

Traversing
configurations. Since we are only interested in the current
configuration, we just check the first item in the returns array. Again,
if it is already suppressed we unsuppress it, and if it is unsuppressed
we suppress it. With the state defined, we set it using the function
SetSuppression2 just like the component.
Test the program, and this time you can select an object first by leftclicking, and then right-click to show the context menu, and click
Toggle Suppression to toggle the suppression state of the item.

Here endith the lesson. You should now have a good understanding
of the traversing process, as well as some of the functions and
methods you can use upon components and features. You should be
able to easily expand this program to do anything you please.

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Acquiring a Custom Property Manager
Adding Custom Properties
Deleting Custom Properties
Check Custom Property Existence
Updating Custom Properties
The ConfigSearcher program

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Custom Property Manager

Using the Custom Property Manager is fairly simple; once you have
the CPM, you can either Add, Delete or Update a custom property in
either the Custom Property or the Configuration Specific Property.
Once you have these basics down, we will create a simple user
interface for letting the user modify properties in the active
document.

Acquiring a Custom Property Manager

By now you should be more than familiar with ways of getting a
handle to a ModelDoc2 object so I will not bore you with the finer
details.
In order to get a CustomPropertyManager object to allow us to
work with the custom properties of the associated model, we have to
get the Extension object of the ModelDoc2 object, and call its
function get_CustomPropertyManager in C#, and
CustomPropertyManager in VB.Net and VBA. This function accepts
one parameter:
Retval = ModelDocExtension.CustomPropertyManager (
ConfigName )

ConfigName is the name of the configuration to get the

manager for.If you pass an empty string in you will get the
custom property manager, not the configuration specific
manager.
So, firstly create a new variable for our manager:
C#
CustomPropertyManager cpm;

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Custom Property Manager

VBA
Dim cpm As CustomPropertyManager

Then all that is left is to call the function to get the manager from
any ModelDoc2 object:

Custom Property Managers

C#
cpm = swModel.Extension.get_CustomPropertyManager("");

VBA
Set cpm = swModel.Extension. CustomPropertyManager("")

You now have a working CustomPropertyManager object to access

and modify the custom properties with.
But what if you want to get a manager to access the configuration
specific properties?

Configuration Specific Managers

C#
cpm = swModel.Extension.get_CustomPropertyManager("Default");

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Custom Property Manager

VBA
Set cpm = swModel.Extension. CustomPropertyManager("Default")

This will get a manager for accessing the properties of the

configuration called Default. But what if you do not know the
names of the configurations? This is how you get get all
configuration names. You can then loop through them and use them
however you like:
C#
string[] modelconfigs = (string[])swModel.GetConfigurationNames();

VBA
Dim modelconfigs As Variant
modelconfigs = swModel.GetConfigurationNames

184

Custom Property Manager

Adding Custom Properties

With access to a working CustomPropertyManager you can now
start to use it how you wish. Lets begin with showing you how to
add, delete and update properties, as well as check for success.
To add a custom property we call the following method from the
CPM:
Retval = CustomPropertyManager.Add2 ( FieldName,
FieldType, FieldValue)

The FieldName parameter is the name of the custom property

field that you want to add. In the image above it is the
equivalent of the PropertyName field.
The FieldType is an enumerator of type swCustomInfoType_e,
with the following options:
o

swCustomInfoUnknown

swCustomInfoText

swCustomInfoDate

swCustomInfoNumber

swCustomInfoYesOrNo

swCustomInfoDouble

In the user interface for the custom properties the user can only
select 4 options (Text, Date, Number, Yes/No). The Double
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Custom Property Manager

option is simple a non-whole number, and the Unknown option
is for errors.
The FieldValue is the Value / Text Expression field that the user
sees, not the Evaluated Value.
The return value is 0 if it fails and 1 if it succeeds.
So, to add a custom property called Description with a value of My
Description, of type Text we do this:
C#
int iRet = cpm.Add2("Description",
SwConst.swCustomInfoType_e.swCustomInfoText, "My Description");

VBA
Dim iRet As Long
iRet = cpm.Add2(Description, swCustomInfoText, My Description)

We then just check this iRet value for true (1) or false (0):
C#
if (iRet == 0)
// Failed
else
// Succeeded

186

Custom Property Manager

VBA
If iRet = 0 Then
Failed
Else
Succeeded
End If

Another quick note: the Add2 function will return a failure if the
property already exists in the first place.

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Custom Property Manager

Deleting Custom Properties

The Delete function is much shorter to explain than the Add2
function as it only has 1 parameter.
retval = CustomPropertyManager.Delete ( FieldName)

The FieldName is the name of the property you wish to delete.

This is the Property Name field in the image above.
The return value is 0 if it fails and 1 if it succeeds.
To delete the custom property field we theoretically just created,
called Description, we call the method Delete of the
CustomPropertyManager like so:
C#
int iRet = cpm.Delete("Description");

VBA
Dim iRet As Long
iRet = cpm.Delete(Description)

And once again we check for a success for failure:

C#
if (iRet == 0)
// Failed

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Custom Property Manager

else
// Succeeded

VBA
If iRet = 0 Then
Failed
Else
Succeeded
End If

Note: This function will return a failure if the custom property did not
exist in the first place, so before we move on to updating custom
properties lets take a look at how to check if one already exists.

189

Custom Property Manager

Check Custom Property Existence

The quick and simple way to get a custom property value is to use
the function Get2 of the CPM object:
C#
string theval, thevalres;
cpm.Get2(fieldName, out theval, out thevalres);

VBA
Dim theval As String
Dim thevalres As String
Cpm.Get2 fieldName, theval, thevalres

The fieldName is the name such as Description that we used

earlier, and the theval and thevalres variables are the Value and
Evaluated Value of the property. After the function call we can then
check if the theval variable is a blank string. This usually indicates
that the property does not exist because the user cannot set a
property value as nothing. The problem is macros and programs can
programmatically set a property value as a blank string, so this is not
always an accurate way to test if a property actually exists.

The better way

The longer-winded but fool-proof way to check whether a custom
property already exists is to get a list of all of the names of the
properties using GetNames function, and then checking every name
until you get a match.

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Custom Property Manager

C#
string theval, theval2;
// Get all property names
List<string> propnames = new List<string>();
string[] getnames;
getnames = (string[])cpm.GetNames();
if (getnames != null)
foreach (string prop in getnames)
propnames.Add(prop.ToUpper());
// Check whether to overwrite if exists
if (propnames.Contains(fieldName.ToUpper()))
{
// FOUND
}
else
// NOT FOUND

We start by creating a new string List called propnames and a string

array called getnames. We fill getnames with all the property names
in our CPM, then we then loop through every name and add it to our
propnames List. The only reason we do this is so that after, we can
run a List function called Contains, which checks for us whether the
list contains a certain element.
We check whether it contains the field we are looking for, and go
from there.
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Custom Property Manager

You may notice that I add and check the names with a function after
them called ToUpper. This function converts all letters to uppercase
because the Contains function is case sensitive, but the CPM is not,
so by them both uppercase it removes any case mismatch.
Now for the VBA version:
VBA
Dim theval As String
Dim thevalres As String
Dim bFound As Boolean
Dim getnames As Variant
getnames = cpm.getnames()
bFound = False
If UBound(getnames) > 0 Then
Dim prop As Variant
For Each prop In getnames
If UCase(prop) = UCase(fieldName) Then
bFound = True
End If
Next
End If

192

Custom Property Manager

Here we have done things slightly different; instead of using a list,
we have simply checked the results as we go, and the end result is in
the bFound variable.
You can bundle this code up into a nice function to return true or
false, you will do this later.
Then to properly check for a deleted property you can first check if it
exists or not first.

193

Custom Property Manager

Updating Custom Properties

The final step in this little journey is to see how to update an already
existing custom property.
Like the Delete function, updating a custom property will return a
failure if it does not already exist, so before you try to update a
property check that it exists first.
To update a custom property we use the following function:
retval = CustomPropertyManager.Set ( FieldName,
FieldValue)

The FieldName is the Property Name in the image above like

other other functions, of the field you want to update the value
for.
The FieldValue is the new value you want to give the property.
This is the Value / Text Expression field in the image.
The return value is 1 if it fails and 0 if it succeeds.
We update our property like this:
C#
cpm.Set(fieldName, "My New Value");

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Custom Property Manager

VBA
cpm.Set fieldName, My New Value

Where fieldName is the usual value for the field, such as

Description in this running example and we are setting its value to
My New Value.
If you want to get the original value before overwriting it use the
Get2 function we went over previously.

195

Custom Property Manager

The ConfigSearcher Program

We are going to create a program that will search custom properties
in all configurations of parts and assemblies, and display its results in
a TreeView control. This should help demonstrate using the Custom
Property Manager, and you should easily be able to expand this tool
to add, delete and update properties.
This tool will connect to the active SolidWorks running, get the
active document, and if it is an Assembly or Part, do the following:-

Ask user for Property Name

Ask user for Value to search for

Then, with that information, when the user clicks the button, the
tool will go through every configuration specific CPM object, check
all of the custom properties looking for the Property Name specified
for the user, and if its value contains the Value that the user entered,
add the results to the TreeView control.
Start with a new project in C# or VB.Net, using the usual template.
Go to the Form Designer. You should already have the default
button there; we are going to add a few more controls.
From the toolbar to the left drag in 2 Label controls, 2 TextBox
Controls, and 1 TreeView control.

Change the Text property of one Label control to:

Configuration specific property to search:

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Custom Property Manager

Change the other to:
Search for:

Then position the items something like this:

Set the (Name) property of the left-hand TextBox control to:

tbConfigProperty

Set the (Name) property of the right-hand TextBox control to:

tbFind

And finally we want to change the name of the TreeView control

(the big control at the bottom):

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Custom Property Manager

Set the (Name) property of the TreeView control to:
tvList

Searching the properties

If you havent already, add a Click event handle to the button like
usual. Within this buttons event function place the code for
connecting to SolidWorks, getting the active documents, and
checking that the document is not a drawing (as drawings cannot
have configuration specific properties):
C#
try
{
swApp =
(SldWorks.SldWorks)Marshal.GetActiveObject("SldWorks.Application");
}
catch
{
MessageBox.Show("Error getting SolidWorks Handle");
return;
}
swModel = (ModelDoc2)swApp.ActiveDoc;
if (swModel == null)
{
MessageBox.Show("Failed to get active document");
return;

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Custom Property Manager

}
if (swModel.GetType() == (int)swDocumentTypes_e.swDocDRAWING)
{
MessageBox.Show("Active document cannot be a drawing");
return;
}

Now we are ready to start our search. We begin by clearing the

TreeView control of any items from previous searches, and getting
the variables entered by the user ready for use:
C#
tvList.Nodes.Clear();
string configProp = tbConfigProperty.Text;
string searchFor = tbFind.Text;
string value;

As you can see the first line is a call to our TreeView control that we
called tvList. By accessing the Nodes object we can call the function
Clear, to remove any nodes in the list.
We then gather the information from the TextBox controls using the
Text property of them which returns the text that the user has typed
in.
The third variable value will be used to store the original value of the
custom property we retrieve later, before comparing it the what the
user wants to find.

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Custom Property Manager

We continue with a few more variables and retrieving all of the
configuration names for this document, so that we can check each
one later:
C#
Configuration config;
CustomPropertyManager cpm;
string[] modelconfigs = (string[])swModel.GetConfigurationNames();

No explanation needed here. Now for the main loop; dont try to
understand it all straight away I will take you through it:
C#
if (modelconfigs != null)
foreach (string s in modelconfigs)
{
config = (Configuration)swModel.GetConfigurationByName(s);
cpm = config.CustomPropertyManager;
value = GetCustomProperty(cpm, configProp);
if (value.ToUpper().Contains(searchFor.ToUpper()))
AddConfig(cpm, s);
}

Firstly, we check that we managed to actually get the configuration

names; normally this wouldnt fail but just in case.

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Custom Property Manager

Then we loop through every name in the list, and for each name we
acquire its Configuration using the ModelDoc2 function
GetConfigurationByName. This takes the name of the
configuration as a parameter:
retval = ModelDoc2.GetConfigurationByName ( name )

The function returns Nothing in VBA and VB.Net, and null in C# so

we could check if we managed to get it. The reason we dont is
because the only time this returns failure is when you pass an invalid
name in, and since we used the GetConfigurationNames function
this will never fail.
With the Configuration object we can then acquire the CPM we have
been long waiting for by accessing it through the Configuration
object.
The only thing left to do is get the current custom property value for
the field we are after, and to check whether the value we are
searching for is contained within it. As you can see we get the value
using a function called GetCustomProperty which accepts a
CustomPropertyManager object and a string. This is not a built-in
function its one you will create in a moment.
With the value of the field the user was after, we check whether it
contains the string the user is searching for. To do this we must cast
both the original string and the one we are looking for to uppercase
to remove any case-sensitivity (such as A = a being false), unless
you want case-sensitivity. With uppercase values we then call the
string function Contains, which returns true or false if a match is
found.

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Custom Property Manager

Finally, if the property value the user specified does contain the value
they were searching for, we want to add this configuration to our list
to show that it was found. Again we do this with a function called
AddConfig that takes a CustomPropertyManager object, and a
string. You will create this function as well as the
GetCustomProperty function now.

GetCustomProperty function
You have actually written this function before! If you go back several
pages to near the beginning of this chapter to the section Check
Custom Property Existence, you will find the following:
C#
string theval, theval2;
// Get all property names
List<string> propnames = new List<string>();
string[] getnames;
getnames = (string[])cpm.GetNames();
if (getnames != null)
foreach (string prop in getnames)
propnames.Add(prop.ToUpper());
// Check whether to overwrite if exists
if (propnames.Contains(fieldName.ToUpper()))
{
// FOUND

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Custom Property Manager

}
else
// NOT FOUND

This searched for the existence of a property. All we do now is add 2

lines of code replacing the 2 comments, and add a return value to get
the function we need, which retrieves the value of the property that
is passed in as a string, using the CustomPropertyManager object
given:
C#
private string GetCustomProperty(CustomPropertyManager cpm, string
fieldName)
{
string theval, thevalres;
// Get all property names
List<string> propnames = new List<string>();
string[] getnames;
if (cpm != null)
{
getnames = (string[])cpm.GetNames();
if (getnames != null)
foreach (string prop in getnames)
propnames.Add(prop.ToUpper());
}
// Check whether to overwrite if exists

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Custom Property Manager

if (propnames.Contains(fieldName.ToUpper()))
{
cpm.Get2(fieldName, out theval, out thevalres);
}
else
theval = "";
return theval;
}

If the property we are looking for doesnt exist, we just return a blank
string; else it calls the Get2 function I described in the previous
section to get the value of the property. The function returns the
theval variable to the caller.

AddConfig function
The last step is to actually display the results once they have been
found. For this we want to show each configuration that matches the
search criteria, and as a bonus we will then add every configuration
specific property to the tree view node of that configuration:
C#
private void AddConfig(CustomPropertyManager cpm, string name)
{
TreeNode tn = tvList.Nodes.Add(name);
string[] getnames;
if (cpm != null)
{

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Custom Property Manager

getnames = (string[])cpm.GetNames();
if (getnames != null)
foreach (string prop in getnames)
tn.Nodes.Add(prop + ": " + GetCustomProperty(cpm, prop));
}
}

We start by adding a new node to

our TreeView control using the Add
function. This function returns a
handle to the TreeNode object it
just created, and adds the node to
the tree. A node is an entry like in a
ListBox control, but it can have child
nodes within it, which display under
it with the +/- symbols, like the
Windows Explorer.

We store this in a new TreeNode variable for use later. Passing a

string into the Add function sets the text of the node to that string,
so it makes sense that we want our item to appear with the name of
the configuration, so we passed that into this function in our code
above.
With the TreeNode added, we then check whether the CPM object is
valid or not, and if it is we get all of the property names from the
CPM (all of the configuration specific properties), and then add a
child node for each property showing its name and value.
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Custom Property Manager

And that is pretty much it in a nutshell! Compile and run your
program and with SolidWorks open and an assembly or part open
test it out.
Make sure the model has some configuration specific properties so
that you can test the searching function and then run it to see the
results.
As usual find the complete source code on the CD. This tool is only
made it the .Net languages.

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Working with Drawings

Automatically create Drawing Sheet
Counting Views
Printing Drawing Sheets

207

Working with Drawings

We have focused mostly on parts and assemblies so far, so lets take
a look at some things to do with drawings. We will start by creating a
macro/program that automatically creates drawing sheets from
parts and assemblies, and move on to analysing features of the
drawing and more.

Automatically create Drawing Sheet

This is simple enough to do; you know the routine by name, usual
template with button or macro with it connecting to SolidWorks, but
this time do not bother checking for an active document as we do
not need one in this example.
The first thing we want to do when the user clicks the button or runs
the macro is to ask the user for the part or assembly to create a new
drawing from. In .Net we can do this using an OpenFileDialog, but in
VBA we must use a much more basic technique of having the user
type in. We could import Windows API calls from the comdlg32.dll,
but thats too much to explain and would veer off the SolidWorks
programming topics.
C#
OpenFileDialog ofd = new OpenFileDialog();
ofd.CheckFileExists = true;
ofd.Filter = "SolidWorks models (*.sldprt, *.sldasm)|*.sldprt;*.sldasm";
ofd.ShowDialog();

We create a new instance of the OpenFileDialog object and then

show it to the user by calling the ShowDialog function.

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Working with Drawings

Before that we set the Filter property, which will limit the user to
selecting only the file formats we want them too. This filter follows
the format of starting with the name which will be displayed to the
user, separated by a pipe (|) then the actual regex string to match file
types, separated by semicolons (;).

Notice the filter list that we typed in and how it has limited the files
we can see to assemblies and parts.
Once the ShowDialog function has returned, the property FileName
of the OpenFileDialog will either be empty if the user clicked cancel,
or the full location of the file they selected, so we check this out.

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Working with Drawings

If the user clicked cancel we will just ignore this and end our function,
but if they selected a file we will create a new variable to store this
value:
C#
string filename = ofd.FileName;
if (filename == "")
return;

And here is the VBA coding so far:

VBA
Dim filename As String
filename = InputBox(Prompt:="Enter full location of file",
Title:="Assembly or Part")
If filename = "" Then
Exit Sub
End If

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Working with Drawings

The InputBox function of VBA creates this little input box for us, so it
will do for now.
Unlike .Net, VBA has not prevented the user from selecting specific
files, nor whether the file even exists, so we must do this now:
VBA
Private Function FileExists(ByVal sPathName As String, Optional
Directory As Boolean) As Boolean
On Error Resume Next
If sPathName <> "" Then
If IsMissing(Directory) Or Directory = False Then
FileExists = (Len(Dir(sPathName)) <> 0)
Else
FileExists = (Len(Dir(sPathName, vbDirectory)) <> 0)
End If
End If

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Working with Drawings

End Function

This function will return True if a file or directory exists, and False if
not, so now we do this:
VBA
If Len(filename) < 8 Then
MsgBox "Invalid filename"
Exit Sub
End If
Dim ext As String
ext = UCase(Right(filename, 7))
If Not FileExists(filename) Or (ext <> ".SLDASM" And ext <> ".SLDPRT")
Then
MsgBox "Invalid filename"
Exit Sub
End If

Here we check the filename is long enough to be valid, and if so get

the last 7 characters of the name, and check whether the caseinsensitive version matches that of a part or assembly, and that the
file exists, else it exits.
You can see the clear advantages .Net has here.

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Working with Drawings

Creating the Drawing Sheet
With the user input gathered for the file location all that is now left is
to create a drawing from this file. We are going to add the 3 common
views to the sheet for this example.
When creating a drawing we must firstly select a drawing template
to use, so lets start by getting that using from the SolidWorks
System Settings for this user.
C#
string drwTemplate =
swApp.GetUserPreferenceStringValue((int)swUserPreferenceStringValu
e_e.swDefaultTemplateDrawing);

VBA
Dim drwTemplate As String
drwTemplate =
swApp.GetUserPreferenceStringValue(swDefaultTemplateDrawing)

The SldWorks functions GetUserPreference* and

SetUserPreference* are used to get and set most of the options you
see in the System and Document options of SolidWorks. In this case
we are pulling in the default drawing template location:

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Working with Drawings

With the template name acquired we can now create a new drawing
using the following function of the SldWorks object. We actually
used this function back at the very beginning:
SldWorks.NewDocument ( templateName, paperSize,
width, height )

Only this time we will be using the paperSize, width and height
parameters. We will acquire all of these from the template name we
just got using another function:
retval = SldWorks.GetTemplateSizes ( filename )

The filename is the name of the template to retrieve the values

from.
The return value is an array of Double numbers, or in VBA a
Variant object, containing, in order, the paper size, width and
height.
The papersize value can be cast to an enumerator of type
swDwgPaperSizes_e if necessary.
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Working with Drawings

Lets get the sizes to complete the equation:
C#
double[] sizes = swApp.GetTemplateSizes(drwTemplate);
if (sizes == null)
{
MessageBox.Show("Failed to get valid template sizes.");
return;
}

VBA
Dim sizes As Variant
sizes = swApp.GetTemplateSizes(drwTemplate)
If IsEmpty(sizes) Then
MsgBox "Failed to get valid template sizes."
Exit Sub
End If

We also check that we managed to get the sizes before the next
step, as this will fail if the template is corrupt or has invalid data, or
does not exist.
With the template name, paper size, width and height, we call the
function NewDocument to create the new drawing sheet we are
after, and store the returned handle to a new variable to access later
for adding views to.

215

Working with Drawings

C#
DrawingDoc swDrawing =
(DrawingDoc)swApp.NewDocument(drwTemplate, (int)sizes[0], sizes[1],
sizes[2]);

VBA
Dim swDrawing As DrawingDoc
Set swDrawing = swApp.NewDocument(drwTemplate, sizes(0), sizes(1),
sizes(2))

In C# we have to cast the first size entry to an int as the function

requires an integer. We also cast the returned Object to a
DrawingDoc, usual procedure. VBA does the casting for us so it
looks a bit simpler.
At this stage SolidWorks should now have a new drawing document
in its active window, and our handle should point to it. Do the usual
check just in case however:
C#
if (swDrawing == null)
{
MessageBox.Show("Failed to create new drawing document.");
return;
}

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Working with Drawings

VBA
If swDrawing Is Nothing Then
MsgBox "Failed to create new drawing sheet."
Exit Sub
End If

Adding the drawing views

With our drawing sheet successfully create the next step is to add the
standard 3-views of our selected model to our new drawing
document using this function:
retval = DrawingDoc.Create3rdAngleViews2 (
modelName)

The modelName is the name of the assembly or part that you

want to create the views from.
The return value is true if success, and false if failure.
There is also a Create1stAngleViews2 function if you would like to
create 1st angle views instead, its left up to you. You could even have
a checkbox or ask the user which they would like to create very
simply.
Here is our call:
C#
bool bRet = swDrawing.Create3rdAngleViews2(filename);
if (!bRet)

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Working with Drawings

{
MessageBox.Show("Failed to add 3 common views.");
return;
}

VBA
Dim bRet As Boolean
bRet = swDrawing.Create3rdAngleViews2(filename)
If bRet = False Then
MsgBox "Failed to add 3 common views."
Exit Sub
End If

Notice the variable we pass in (filename) is the name of the model

we asked the user to select earlier. If all has gone well we have now
created the 3-views in the drawing document of the user selected
model.

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Working with Drawings

Counting Views
Another off the shelf random exercise for you now; this time we are
going to find out how many drawing views a drawing has in each
sheet. This may not seem of much use, but this demonstrates how to
access handles to drawing views to do what you please with. We will
be displaying the drawing view types and names in this example.
Start with the usual template, and get the active document, check
that it is a drawing and proceed.
Starting with .Net as usual, in the Form Designer drag a new
TextBox control to your form; we are going to use this to display the
information. Set its Multiline property to True and its ScrollBars
property to Both.

219

Working with Drawings

If you remember some chapters back where we created the
program/macro to loop all drawing sheets and save them as DXF, we
will be using the same coding here to loop through each sheet, and
then within that loop get our information:
C#
DrawingDoc swDrwDoc = (DrawingDoc)swModel;
string[] sheetNames = (string[])swDrwDoc.GetSheetNames();
Sheet swDrwSheet;
textBox1.Text = ;
foreach (string sheetname in sheetNames)
{
swDrwDoc.ActivateSheet(sheetname);
swDrwSheet = (Sheet)swDrwDoc.GetCurrentSheet();
GetSheetInformation(swDrwSheet);
}

The only difference here is that we clear our TextBox control of any
text before we begin so that any text already in is removed, and we
have added an extra variable called swDrwSheet, which is a Sheet
object. Once each sheet is activated, we get a handle to it using the
function GetCurrentSheet. With this variable we can then do what
we please with the sheet, so to keep things clean and tidy we pass
this Sheet object to a new function that will do our dirty work, called
GetSheetInformation. Place your function below the button event
function:

220

Working with Drawings

C#
private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
...
...
DrawingDoc swDrwDoc = (DrawingDoc)swModel;
string[] sheetNames = (string[])swDrwDoc.GetSheetNames();
Sheet swDrwSheet;
foreach (string sheetname in sheetNames)
{
swDrwDoc.ActivateSheet(sheetname);
swDrwSheet = (Sheet)swDrwDoc.GetCurrentSheet();
GetSheetInformation(swDrwSheet,
(SldWorks.View)swDrwDoc.GetFirstView());
}
}
private void GetSheetInformation(Sheet sheet, SldWorks.View firstView)
{
}

I have omitted some code; this is just to show you where to place
your function.
The function takes the Sheet object for obvious reasons, and a View
object that will be the first view of the sheet so that we can loop
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Working with Drawings

through them all within the function, gather the information, and
add that info to our TextBox control.
C#
int iCount = 0;
string nl = System.Environment.NewLine;
string tab = " - ";
textBox1.Text += "Sheet Name: " + sheet.GetName() + nl;
while (firstView != null)
{
string viewType =
((swDrawingViewTypes_e)firstView.Type).ToString();
textBox1.Text += tab + firstView.GetName2() + " (" + viewType + ")" +
nl;
iCount++;
firstView = (SldWorks.View)firstView.GetNextView();
}
textBox1.Text += tab + "Total views: " + iCount.ToString() + nl + nl;

The first thing we do is to create a new variable to store the number

of views we encounter called iCount. Then we create a few string
variables for a new line (like pressing Enter on the keyboard), and for
a tab to show that an item is indented. Then we add the sheet name
to our TextBox text as well as a new line.

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Working with Drawings

Next we loop every view within this sheet by checking if the current
view is null or not, and if it isnt process it and then call the View
function GetNextView; this will return the next view of its parent
Sheet object, or null if it has reached the end.
For each view we then get the type of view we are dealing with by
converting the integer returned from the Type property of the View
object back to an enumerator variable of type
swDrawingViewTypes_e, and then back into a readable string like
we have done in previous examples.
With a readable type value, we then add the views name and type to
the text. Notice we have added the tab variable to the start; this
creates the effect of indenting our entries to show it is part of the
sheet.
Once the details have been added we increment the view count and
loop.
Finally when all views have been processed we want to tell the user
how many views there were on this particular sheet. All we need to
do for this is to show the user the iCount value:
textBox1.Text += tab + "Total views: " + iCount.ToString() + nl + nl;

With this being the final line of this sheet that we are adding to the
TextBox, we add two new lines instead of one to give it a clean
break from the next sheet.
Compile and test your program and take a look at the results:

223

Working with Drawings

You will notice here that the first view of all sheets is actually the
sheet itself; this is because the structure of the SolidWorks sheet is
basically just a bunch of View objects embedded inside other View
objects. If you want to exclude this item from the list just check the
Type value, and if it is the type swDrawingSheet, skip it.

Now onto the VBA version of this little tool; start with the usual
template. Insert a new User Form from the Insert menu and add a
CommandButton and a TextBox to the form.
Set the MultiLine property of the TextBox to True, and the
ScrollBars property to Both.
224

Working with Drawings

Position them so they look something like this:

Double-click the button to add the button Click event function. Move
the usual code (for connecting to SolidWorks, getting the active
document and checking if it is a drawing) from the main function to
this Click event function, and within the main function place this
code to show the form:
VBA
Sub main()
UserForm1.Show
End Sub

Back to the event function below the code we just pasted in, we add
the same code I described above in the .Net version.

225

Working with Drawings

VBA
Dim swDrwDoc As DrawingDoc
Set swDrwDoc = swModel
Dim sheetNames As Variant
sheetNames = swModel.GetSheetNames()
Dim swDrwSheet As sheet
TextBox1.Text = ""
Dim sheetname As Variant
For Each sheetname In sheetNames
swDrwDoc.ActivateSheet sheetname
Set swDrwSheet = swDrwDoc.GetCurrentSheet()
GetSheetInformation swDrwSheet, swDrwDoc.GetFirstView()
Next sheetname

If you need an explanation of this code just take a look at the C#

version above as all of the theory is explained there.
All that is left now is to create the GetSheetInformation function.
This function is slightly different than the other version as explained
many times now VBA lacks the ability to convert and enumerator to
a string directly.
I will leave out the code line of acquiring the type value and show
that separately.

226

Working with Drawings

VBA
Private Sub GetSheetInformation(ByVal sheet As sheet, firstView As
View)
Dim iCount As Integer
iCount = 0
Dim sTab As String
sTab = " - "
TextBox1.Text = TextBox1.Text & "Sheet Name: " & sheet.GetName() &
vbCr
While Not firstView Is Nothing
Dim iType As Integer
iType = firstView.Type
Dim viewType As String
viewType = TODO
TextBox1.Text = TextBox1.Text & sTab & firstView.GetName2() & " ("
& viewType & ")" & vbCr
iCount = iCount + 1
Set firstView = firstView.GetNextView()
Wend
TextBox1.Text = TextBox1.Text & "Total views: " & iCount & vbCr & vbCr
End Sub

227

Working with Drawings

Notice the TODO note within the code. This is the like where we
statically convert the integer value of the Type property of the View
object to a user-friendly readable string variable.
VBA
viewType = Switch(
iType = swDrawingViewTypes_e.swDrawingAlternatePositionView,
"Alternate Position View",
iType = swDrawingViewTypes_e.swDrawingAuxiliaryView, "Auxiliary
View",
iType = swDrawingViewTypes_e.swDrawingDetachedView, "Detached
View",
iType = swDrawingViewTypes_e.swDrawingDetailView, "Detail View",
iType = swDrawingViewTypes_e.swDrawingNamedView, "Named View",
iType = swDrawingViewTypes_e.swDrawingProjectedView, "Projected
View",
iType = swDrawingViewTypes_e.swDrawingRelativeView, "Relative
View",
iType = swDrawingViewTypes_e.swDrawingSectionView, "Section
View",
iType = swDrawingViewTypes_e.swDrawingSheet, "Sheet",
iType = swDrawingViewTypes_e.swDrawingStandardView, "Standard
View")

All we have done here is done a Switch function to select the correct
value from the list. This function was explained in a previous chapter,
but basically it works by returning the variable after the first value
that returns True; so in this case, we check if iType =
swDrawingDetailView, if it does it returns the variable after that,
which is Detail View, if it is false, it carries on until it finds one.
228

Working with Drawings

You may notice
that the TextBox
object can
actually be
edited by the
user simply by
typing into it.
This is not really
a problem but
technically it is
not good practise
for a program to
allow the user to do anything they are not meant to be doing. If you
want to fix this all you need to do is go back to the Form Designer
and alter the Locked property to True. In .Net the property is called
Readonly.

229

Working with Drawings

Printing Drawing Sheets

Another popular function commonly asked for by SolidWorks
programmers is the ability to print a document. This section will
show you how to print any document, by it a drawing, part or
assembly, using the 2 possibly functions (one of which includes the
ability to specify your printer name and options), and then give an
example of printing each drawing sheet.
I will start by describing the functions we are going to use, and then
we will go ahead and implement them into a nice little package.
The two options we have here are to print the document with one
line of code, that prints the document to the last printer it was
printed to, or the option to specify all details such as printer name.
Starting with the simplest method:

PrintDirect function
This function of the ModelDoc2 object takes no parameters and
returns no value, so it couldnt be simpler. Once you have a
ModelDoc2 handle (or an AssemblyDoc, PartDoc or DrawingDoc to
cast back to), you can call this function:
void ModelDoc2.PrintDirect ()

Although this is nice and simple, that is pretty much the last thing
you want when you are printing something; it provides no options for
printing multiple copies, printing sheet ranges or printing to a
specific printer.

230

Working with Drawings

PrintOut2 function
If you require more control over your printing then this is the
function for you.
void = ModelDocExtension.PrintOut2 ( PageArray,
Copies, Collate, Printer, PrintFileName)

The PageArray parameter is an array of integer values grouped

in pairs. Each pair is a range from the first value to the last such
as 1 and 5, which would print pages 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. If you had an
array containing 1, 5, 7 and 8 then pages 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7 and 8
would be printed.
The Copies parameter is the number of copies to send to the
printer, ranging from 1 onwards.
The Collate parameter is a Boolean variable for whether to
collate the pages or not. If you have selected to print more than
one copy then collating will print pages in complete groups
instead of single page groups. For example with collating on and
2 copies selected, the output with collation would be 1, 2, 3, 4, 1,
2, 3, 4. Without collating the same output would be 1, 1, 2, 2, 3,
3, 4, 4, in order of the pages coming out of the printer.
The Printer parameter is the exact matching name of the Printer
of the printer to print to, from the Printers list in the Control
Panel. Set to null or Nothing causes this function to print to the
default printer.
The PrintFileName parameter is the name of the file to save the
print output to. This is not like printing to PDF, this is actually
sending the print data to a file, not the actual rendered output.

231

Working with Drawings

This function is part of the ModelDocExtension object, not the
ModelDoc2 object like the PrintDirect function, so in order to call it
just do the following (presuming swModel is a ModelDoc2 variable):
swModel.Extension.PrintOut2(...)

Although you can use this function to print any type of document,
the following example will be to print drawing sheets only.

The Printing program

Starting the usual fashion with the .Net example first; create a new
project with the usual template. Add 2 Buttons, a ListBox, and a
ComboBox and place/name them like so:

Make a few changes to the properties of these controls; change the

SelectionMode of the ListBox control:

This will allow the user to select multiple items from the list.

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Working with Drawings

Next, change the DropDownStyle of the ComboBox control:

This will prevent the user from editing the list as we want them to be
fixed to the list here. Name the buttons so there Text value is as
shown, and add a Click event handle to each.

Getting a list of installed printers

In the Coding View we are going to get a list of all installed printers
on the computer as soon as the form is opened; first, add the
following to the using section so that we can access the list of
printers using a System call:
C#
using System.Drawing.Printing;

Declare a new variable next to the usual ones:

C#
SldWorks.SldWorks swApp;
ModelDoc2 swModel;
string[] printers;

This will store our printer list. Within the constructor function add
the following:

233

Working with Drawings

C#
public Form1()
{
InitializeComponent();
printers = new string[PrinterSettings.InstalledPrinters.Count];
PrinterSettings.InstalledPrinters.CopyTo(printers, 0);
comboBox1.Items.AddRange(printers);
comboBox1.SelectedIndex = 0;
}

We initialise the printers variable to the size of the number of

printers that are installed on the computer, and then we copy the list
of printers to that variable by accessing the array of printers from the
PrinterSettings object. The CopyTo function copies the content of
the calling array (InstalledPrinters) to the destination array
(printers), starting at the position in the array specified (0).
Simplistically this just copies the InstalledPrinters array to the
printers array.
With the array gathered, we load the list into our ComboBox control
and select the first item in the list by default.
A quick note here; I have not added error checking for if there are no
printers at all installed on the computer; if there are not this program
will just crash. I will leave the error-checking task up to you as a
simple test of what you have learned so far, so if you can manage it.

234

Working with Drawings

Getting sheet names
Within the Click function of the Get Sheets button we are going to
place our usual code for connecting to SolidWorks and the rest, and
get all drawing sheet names like we have done in previous examples.
We then add the sheet names to the ListBox control so the user can
select which sheets to print:
C#
private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
try
{
swApp =
(SldWorks.SldWorks)Marshal.GetActiveObject("SldWorks.Application");
}
catch
{
MessageBox.Show("Error getting SolidWorks Handle");
return;
}
swModel = (ModelDoc2)swApp.ActiveDoc;
if (swModel == null)
{
MessageBox.Show("Failed to get active document");
return;
}

235

Working with Drawings

if (swModel.GetType() != (int)swDocumentTypes_e.swDocDRAWING)
{
MessageBox.Show("Active document must be a drawing");
return;
}
DrawingDoc swDrwDoc = (DrawingDoc)swModel;
string[] sheetNames = (string[])swDrwDoc.GetSheetNames();
listBox1.Items.Clear();
listBox1.Items.AddRange(sheetNames);
}

I am hoping you understand all of this code by now, as every step

here has been done at some point more than once in previous
chapters.
So far when we start our program (feel free to at this point), the
ComboBox control will populate with all printer names installed on
the computer for the user to select, and upon clicking the Get
Sheets button the ListBox control will populate with all sheet
names of the currently active drawing allowing the user to select one
or more sheets which to print. So, all that is left for us to do now is to
print the selected sheets from the list to the selected printer from
the combo box.

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Working with Drawings

Printing the selection
Start by adding a Click event function to the Print! button; we will
then check that the user has at least selected one sheet to print from
the list, and if they have, print them:
C#
private void button2_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
if (listBox1.SelectedItems.Count == 0)
return;
foreach (int position in listBox1.SelectedIndices)
{
int[] pages = new int[]{position + 1, position + 1};
swModel.Extension.PrintOut2(pages, 1, false,
(string)comboBox1.SelectedItem, null);
}
}

Not too much to do here. To get the user selection from the ListBox
control we access its property SelectedItems. We check how many
items have been selected, and if none have, exit.
Next, loop every item the user selected, but this time we use the
property SelectedIndices. The reason for this is because as shown
above using the PrintOut2 function requires page numbers, not
sheet names. The trick here is that the GetSheetNames function we
used to retrieve the sheet names in the first place retrieves them in
the page number order, so this works a treat. We add the 1 to the

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Working with Drawings

position because the SelectedIndicies is a 0-based array, whereas
page numbers as 1-based arrays (starting at 1, not 0).
Remember that we said the first parameter of the PrintOut2
function is an array of pairs; since we want to print just this page; we
pass in the same page number twice to print just that page. We tell
the function to print 1 copy, not to collate, print to the printer the
user selected, and ignore the PrintToFile name.
That is all there is to it. Run your program, start by getting the sheet
names, then select one or more (using the Shift and/or Ctrl keys) and
then click the Print! button to print the sheets!

Now onto the VBA version; everything is exactly the same as the
.Net version except for small differences in acquiring the printer list
and the likes.

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Working with Drawings

The Printing program in VBA
Start with the usual template. Insert a new form and in the main
function place the following code to show the form:
VBA
Sub main()
UserForm1.Show
End Sub

In the Form Designer add 2 Buttons, a ListBox control and a

ComboBox control. Position them so they look something like this:
We need to change
a few properties;
select the ListBox
control and change
the property
MultiSelect to
MultiExtended so
the user can select
more than one item
from the list.

Select the ComboBox control and change the property

DropListStyle to List; this prevents the user from altering the list,
which we dont want them doing.

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Working with Drawings

Getting a list of installed printers
Welcome to the world of complexity! Again, due to the lack of power
in VBA, getting a list of printers is somewhat more complicated than
the .Net version and requires invoking functions from the Windows
API libraries. Dont worry about understanding this code as you will
only ever need to call the final function, not understand it. I will not
explain the function in great detail because there is no need to for
understanding SolidWorks API.
Either add a new Module to your project using Insert->Module, or
use the existing Module file. At the top of the file place the following
code. This in a way imports the functions we need from the
Windows API, for lack of a simpler explanation:
VBA
Const PRINTER_ENUM_CONNECTIONS = &H4
Const PRINTER_ENUM_LOCAL = &H2
Private Declare Function EnumPrinters Lib "winspool.drv" Alias
"EnumPrintersA" _
(ByVal flags As Long, ByVal name As String, ByVal Level As Long,
_
pPrinterEnum As Long, ByVal cdBuf As Long, pcbNeeded As Long,
_
pcReturned As Long) As Long
Private Declare Function PtrToStr Lib "kernel32" Alias "lstrcpyA" _
(ByVal RetVal As String, ByVal Ptr As Long) As Long
Private Declare Function StrLen Lib "kernel32" Alias "lstrlenA" _

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Working with Drawings

(ByVal Ptr As Long) As Long

Now we can call the functions EnumPrinters, PtrToStr and StrLen;

these are not part of VBA naturally, so that is why we had to declare
them.
The final task for this is to create a function that will use these calls
we declared to get a list of all printers installed on the computer and
return a simple array to the user. We do this like so:
VBA
Public Function ListPrinters() As Variant
Dim bSuccess As Boolean
Dim iBufferRequired As Long
Dim iBufferSize As Long
Dim iBuffer() As Long
Dim iEntries As Long
Dim iIndex As Long
Dim strPrinterName As String
Dim iDummy As Long
Dim iDriverBuffer() As Long
Dim StrPrinters() As String
iBufferSize = 3072
ReDim iBuffer((iBufferSize \ 4) - 1) As Long
'EnumPrinters will return a value False if the buffer is not big enough

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Working with Drawings

bSuccess = EnumPrinters(PRINTER_ENUM_CONNECTIONS Or _
PRINTER_ENUM_LOCAL, vbNullString, _
1, iBuffer(0), iBufferSize, iBufferRequired, iEntries)
If Not bSuccess Then
If iBufferRequired > iBufferSize Then
iBufferSize = iBufferRequired
Debug.Print "iBuffer too small. Trying again with "; _
iBufferSize & " bytes."
ReDim iBuffer(iBufferSize \ 4) As Long
End If
'Try again with new buffer
bSuccess = EnumPrinters(PRINTER_ENUM_CONNECTIONS Or _
PRINTER_ENUM_LOCAL, vbNullString, _
1, iBuffer(0), iBufferSize, iBufferRequired, iEntries)
End If
If Not bSuccess Then
'Enumprinters returned False
MsgBox "Error enumerating printers."
Exit Function
Else
'Enumprinters returned True, use found printers to fill the array
ReDim StrPrinters(iEntries - 1)
For iIndex = 0 To iEntries - 1
'Get the printername
strPrinterName = Space$(StrLen(iBuffer(iIndex * 4 + 2)))
iDummy = PtrToStr(strPrinterName, iBuffer(iIndex * 4 + 2))
StrPrinters(iIndex) = strPrinterName
Next iIndex

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Working with Drawings

End If
ListPrinters = StrPrinters
End Function

In brief; this function calls the EnumPrinters function to get a list of

all printers on the system, and store them in an array StrPrinters,
which it then returns to the caller.
Now we want to populate our ComboBox control with a list of
printers when the form is first displayed; go to the coding view of the
user form, and from the Object Box at the top select the UserForm1
item from the list. Then from the Procedures Box select the
Activate to add a function for when the form activates.

Within this Activate function add the following code to call the
function we created just and fill the ComboBox with the printer list:
VBA
Private Sub UserForm_Activate()
Dim StrPrinters As Variant
Dim x As Long
StrPrinters = ListPrinters()

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Working with Drawings

'Fist check whether the array is filled with anything, by calling another
function, IsBounded.
If IsBounded(StrPrinters) Then
For x = LBound(StrPrinters) To UBound(StrPrinters)
ComboBox1.AddItem StrPrinters(x)
Next x
ComboBox1.ListIndex = 0
Else
MsgBox "Failed to get printer list"
End If
End Sub

All we do is create a new Variant variable to store our printer list and
call the ListPrinters function. We check that the list is actually a valid
array by calling a IsBounded, a function yet to be defined. If OK we
loop through all items and add them to the ComboBox control.
The IsBounded function checks if the variable passed in is actually an
array by checking that the upper bound of the variable is a numeric
value. If the variable is not an array it will not return a value:
VBA
Public Function IsBounded(vArray As Variant) As Boolean
On Error Resume Next
IsBounded = IsNumeric(UBound(vArray))
End Function

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Working with Drawings

Getting sheet names
Now for the easy part, getting the sheet names; back in the Form
Designer, double-click your Get Sheets button to add a Click event
function. Within this function we are going to place the usual
connection and active document code, and then to get all the sheet
names of the active document using the GetSheetNames function
we have used before:
VBA
Set swApp = GetObject("", "SldWorks.Application")
If swApp Is Nothing Then
MsgBox "Error gettings SolidWorks Handle"
Exit Sub
End If
Set swModel = swApp.ActiveDoc
If swModel Is Nothing Then
MsgBox "Failed to get active document"
Exit Sub
End If
If swModel.GetType() <> swDocDRAWING Then
MsgBox "Active document must be a drawing"
Exit Sub
End If
Dim swDrwDoc As DrawingDoc
Set swDrwDoc = swModel

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Working with Drawings

Dim sheetNames As Variant
sheetNames = swModel.GetSheetNames()
ListBox1.Clear
Dim sheetname As Variant
For Each sheetname In sheetNames
ListBox1.AddItem (sheetname)
Next sheetname
End Sub

This should all be familiar enough for you to understand by now.

Now we are at the point where the user can get the sheet names and
select a printer, and all that is left to do is to print the selected
sheets.

Printing the selection

In order to print the selected sheets we follow much the same
process as the .Net example, with some slight differences.
Add a Click event function to the Print! button by double-clicking it
and then go to that function and add the following code to print the
selected sheets:

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Working with Drawings

VBA
Private Sub CommandButton2_Click()
Dim i As Integer
For i = 0 To ListBox1.ListCount - 1
If ListBox1.Selected(i) Then
Dim pages(0) As Long
pages(0) = i + 1
swModel.Extension.PrintOut2 pages, 1, False, ComboBox1.Text, ""
End If
Next
End Sub

We start with a For loop to loop all of the items within the list. Within
the loop we check whether that item is selected, and if it is we create
a new variable for the page numbers and call the PrintOut2 function.
The difference with the VBA call to the PrintOut2 function is that it
doesnt 2 items in the page array when printing a single page, it takes
just one. Other than that everything else is the same. Give it a try!

247

Working with Drawings

248

Add-ins
The basics of an Add-in
Removing Add-in entries

249

Add-ins
I was stuck with the decision of the last chapter either covering file
importing and exporting with Excel, XML and ini files, or a quick
brush over of add-ins; my choice was the latter as I feel many of you
will find it harder to create an add-in on your own without a guide
than you will to work with files as there are plenty of tutorials for you
on file input/output. OK, so lets get straight to it.

The basics of an Add-in

As I only intend to brush over add-ins, I will not explain every nittygritty detail, but instead focus on the main sections of code you are
most likely to need to alter and play with.
Start with the template provided on the accompanying CD in the
Chapter 9 folder called MyFirstAddin.
When you open this solution file you will notice your project has
several items in the Solution Explorer:

The AssemblyInfo is just assembly information in every .Net project,

and the BitmapHandler is the code to generate our images for the

250

Add-ins
menus; we will not touch this coding in this example, only use its
functions.
The 2 image files are used for our menu icons, and are basically
16x16 icons (small) and 24x24 icons (large) lines up horizontally to
create a strip.
The only file remaining is the main add-in code file that we will be
using called MyFirstAddin; this contains all the important code I am
going to explain.
Open the
MyFirstAddin
file and you will
see something
similar to the
image to the left.
Try not to take
too much of the
code in as it will
likely just go
right over your
head and just
confuse the
matter, just
accept the fact
that it does what
it does for now,
which is to create a SolidWorks add-in with a few menu items. I will
cover as much of the important stuff as I can in this brief section.
Start by taking a glance at the Local Variables section:
251

Add-ins
C#
ISldWorks iSwApp;
ICommandManager iCmdMgr;
int addinID;

These three variables will be used later.

Take a look at the SolidWorks Registration section:
C#
[ComRegisterFunctionAttribute]
public static void RegisterFunction(Type t)
{
Microsoft.Win32.RegistryKey hklm =
Microsoft.Win32.Registry.LocalMachine;
Microsoft.Win32.RegistryKey hkcu =
Microsoft.Win32.Registry.CurrentUser;
string keyname = "SOFTWARE\\SolidWorks\\Addins\\{" +
t.GUID.ToString() + "}";
Microsoft.Win32.RegistryKey addinkey =
hklm.CreateSubKey(keyname);
addinkey.SetValue(null, 0);
addinkey.SetValue("Description", "Sample Addin ");
addinkey.SetValue("Title", "MyFirstAddin");
keyname = "Software\\SolidWorks\\AddInsStartup\\{" +
t.GUID.ToString() + "}";
addinkey = hkcu.CreateSubKey(keyname);

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Add-ins
addinkey.SetValue(null, 0);
}
[ComUnregisterFunctionAttribute]
public static void UnregisterFunction(Type t)
{
//Insert code here.
Microsoft.Win32.RegistryKey hklm =
Microsoft.Win32.Registry.LocalMachine;
Microsoft.Win32.RegistryKey hkcu =
Microsoft.Win32.Registry.CurrentUser;
string keyname = "SOFTWARE\\SolidWorks\\Addins\\{" +
t.GUID.ToString() + "}";
hklm.DeleteSubKey(keyname);
keyname = "Software\\SolidWorks\\AddInsStartup\\{" +
t.GUID.ToString() + "}";
hkcu.DeleteSubKey(keyname);
}

All that these two functions do is to add and delete a simple registry
entry containing details of your add-in, so that SolidWorks knows
where to look to load your file, thats it. An entry looks like this:

253

Add-ins

Take a look at the ISwAddin Implementation section. This section

contains the functions that are called when SolidWorks attempts to
load your add-in, and unload it once done.
C#
public MyFirstAddin()
{
}
public bool ConnectToSW(object ThisSW, int cookie)
{
iSwApp = (ISldWorks)ThisSW;
addinID = cookie;
//Setup callbacks
iSwApp.SetAddinCallbackInfo(0, this, addinID);

254

Add-ins
#region Setup the Command Manager
iCmdMgr = iSwApp.GetCommandManager(cookie);
AddCommandMgr();
#endregion
return true;
}
public bool DisconnectFromSW()
{
RemoveCommandMgr();
iSwApp = null;
GC.Collect();
return true;
}

The first function is the class constructor, we do nothing here. The

next function, ConnectToSW, is the function run when SolidWorks
loads your add-in. In this function is where we place our start up
coding.
In this example we initialise a new ICommandManager object by
calling the GetCommandManager function, which accepts the addin cookie variable as its parameter. With this Command Manager we
can now add a command item here by calling the function
AddCommandItem (defined later).

255

Add-ins
The DisconnectFromSW function is called when SolidWorks is
closing, so we gracefully remove any items we added to the
SolidWorks interface such as our command menu.
Finally, take a look at the UI Methods section. This is the section
where our code has been placed to add the command menu:
C#
public void AddCommandMgr()
{
ICommandGroup cmdGroup;
BitmapHandler iBmp = new BitmapHandler();
Assembly thisAssembly;
thisAssembly =
System.Reflection.Assembly.GetAssembly(this.GetType());
cmdGroup = iCmdMgr.CreateCommandGroup(1, "MyFirstAddin",
"This is my add-in", "", -1);
cmdGroup.LargeIconList =
iBmp.CreateFileFromResourceBitmap("MyFirstAddin.ToolbarLarge.bmp"
, thisAssembly);
cmdGroup.SmallIconList =
iBmp.CreateFileFromResourceBitmap("MyFirstAddin.ToolbarSmall.bmp"
, thisAssembly);
cmdGroup.LargeMainIcon =
iBmp.CreateFileFromResourceBitmap("MyFirstAddin.ToolbarLarge.bmp"
, thisAssembly);

256

Add-ins
cmdGroup.SmallMainIcon =
iBmp.CreateFileFromResourceBitmap("MyFirstAddin.ToolbarSmall.bmp"
, thisAssembly);
cmdGroup.AddCommandItem2("Start my external program", 0, "Click
me", "Click me", 0, "StartExternalProgram", "", 0,
(int)(SwConst.swCommandItemType_e.swMenuItem |
SwConst.swCommandItemType_e.swToolbarItem));
cmdGroup.Activate();
}
public void RemoveCommandMgr()
{
iCmdMgr.RemoveCommandGroup(1);
}

We start by declaring 3 variables; the iCommandGroup is the main

variable we are interested in, which is used to store a command
group we create. A Command Manager is like a menu or a toolbar
manager, only it is actually both. By creating a command manager
you can tell it to create a group, which acts as a menu and/or a
toolbar within SolidWorks.
The BitmapHandler is a handler to convert the images we have in
our Solution Explorer into workable icons for the menu and
toolbars.
The Assembly is what is called a Reflection object; we use it to get
a handle to a running .Net assembly. In this case we are getting a

257

Add-ins
handle to ourselves (the assembly itself), so that we can access the
images embedded within it (i.e. the images in our Solution
Explorer).
thisAssembly =
System.Reflection.Assembly.GetAssembly(this.GetType(
));

This line is used to get the handle to ourself by using the keyword
this.
The end goal here is to create a few menu items, but before we can
have a menu item, we need a menu to store them in. As we are using
a Command Manager we do not add a menu, but a group. This
group will act as a menu as well as a toolbar if you choose to have
one.

Adding a Command Group

The function we use to add this Command Group is called
CreateCommandGroup, of an ICommandManager object.
LpGroup = CommandManager.CreateCommandGroup (
UserID, Title, Tooltip, Hint, Position)

Like when we created a Property Manager Page control, the

UserID is just a unique number specified by the user. This number
only has to be unique for this add-in, not unique to all of the
SolidWorks add-ins, so it is up to the user to make sure each call
to CreateCommandGroup uses a different value.

258

Add-ins
The Title is the name that will appear on the menu or toolbar.
For example, the Title values for the standard SolidWorks
menus are File, View, Tools, Help.
The Tooltip is the little tip that pops up in a yellow box when the
user hovers over the item.
The Hint is the same thing as the Tooltip only this text appears
in the SolidWorks status bar at the bottom of SolidWorks when
the user hovers over the item.
The Position is the position that your menu will appear in the
main menu, stating at 0 for the beginning.

To create our example group we use the following code:

cmdGroup = iCmdMgr.CreateCommandGroup(1,
"MyFirstAddin", "This is my add-in", "", -1);

As you can see, the unique ID we assign to our group is just the
number 1. We call our group MyFirstAddin, and the tooltip as This
is my add-in, and nothing for the hint. We position it using -1 so it
gets positioned by default at the end of the menu items.
Before we continue to add command items we want to add some
icons ready for use with our items. To do this we use the
BitmapHandler object and set the 4 icon properties of the
ICommandManager object using the following lines:

259

Add-ins
C#
cmdGroup.LargeIconList =
iBmp.CreateFileFromResourceBitmap("MyFirstAddin.ToolbarLarge.bmp"
, thisAssembly);
cmdGroup.SmallIconList =
iBmp.CreateFileFromResourceBitmap("MyFirstAddin.ToolbarSmall.bmp"
, thisAssembly);
cmdGroup.LargeMainIcon =
iBmp.CreateFileFromResourceBitmap("MyFirstAddin.ToolbarLarge.bmp"
, thisAssembly);
cmdGroup.SmallMainIcon =
iBmp.CreateFileFromResourceBitmap("MyFirstAddin.ToolbarSmall.bmp"
, thisAssembly);

The first parameter that we pass in is the exact name of the

namespace that our code is within, plus the name of the image in the
Solution Explorer, separated by a period (.):

260

Add-ins
Adding a Command Item
Now we have a Command Group and some icons to use, we are
ready to add a Command Item. By adding this item it will
automatically add the menu item in the add-in. For this we call the
function AddCommandItem2:
*CmdIndex = CommandGroup.AddCommandItem2 ( Name,
Position, HintString, ToolTip, ImageListIndex,
CallbackFunction, EnableMethod, UserID,
MenuTBOption)

The Name is the name that will appear in the menu or toolbar,
such as the menu item of the File group for opening a file is called
Open....
The Position is again the position of item, this time in the group;
zero-based index.
The HintString is the hint that appears in the SolidWorks status
bar.
The ToolTip is the tip that appears in the yellow box when the
user hovers over the item.
The ImageListIndex is the position within the image list you
added in the previous step, starting from 0.
The CallbackFunction is the exact case-sensitive name of the
function within your add-in to actually run when the user clicks
this item. You will see this in use in a moment.

261

Add-ins
The EnableMethod is again the name of a function to call, but
this time this function is called before the item gets displayed. It
specified whether to enable or disable the item.
The UserID is the unique identifier if this item for this group. It
only has to be unique for this group and is not needed; to ignore
it pass 0.
The MenuTBOption is an enumerator value for selecting where
to add the item; to the menu, to the toolbar, or both.
The function returns the index position the menu item has been
placed in the group.
For this example here is our call to this function:
cmdGroup.AddCommandItem2("Start my external
program", 0, "Click me", "Click me", 0,
"StartExternalProgram", "", 0,
(int)(SwConst.swCommandItemType_e.swMenuItem |
SwConst.swCommandItemType_e.swToolbarItem));

We call the item Start my external program, and ignore any

specific positioning by passing in 0. We tell the item to run a function
called StartExternalProgram from our add-in code, which we will
create later, and we ignore the EnableMethod function by passing
an empty string. We set the ImageListIndex to 0 so it uses the first
icon from our lists that we loaded in previously. The two image strips
look like this, so the index 0 will use the left-most icon:

262

Add-ins
We ignore the UserID as well by passing in 0, and we tell the item to
appear in both the toolbar and menu controls.
Now with our menu item created all that is left is to activate the
group.
cmdGroup.Activate();

The final step is to create a function called StartExternalProgram

that we told our command item to call when the item is clicked.
Within this function you can place any code you like, including all of
the code we have covered in this book. A good test for you here
would be to place the .Net Property Manager Page code into the
add-in so you can handle event call-backs properly.
For this example however I will be creating the highly requested code
for running an external program or SolidWorks macro. The code is 2
short and sweet lines:
C#
public void StartExternalProgram()
{
System.Diagnostics.Process.Start("notepad.exe");
iSwApp.RunMacro(@"C:\mymacro.swp", "Macro1", "main");
}

The first line calls the function Start, from the

System.Diagnositcs.Process class; this function is the same as
writing something in the Start->Run... dialog box. The usual
procedure is to place the full address/location of the file/program you

263

Add-ins
wish to start. Because Notepad is within a system folder it is found
automatically without the need for its full location.
The second line runs a SolidWorks macro; the function is as follows:
retval = SldWorks.RunMacro ( filePathName,
moduleName, procedureName )

The filePathName is the full location and filename of the macro

to run such as C:\My Stuff\My macro.swp.
The moduleName is the name of the module code file that
contains the function you want to run. By default when creating
macros from SolidWorks this code file is called Macro1.
The prodecureName is the function name within the selected
module code file that you want to run. By default you would run
the main function.

In our example we use a macro that looks like the picture above, and
as you can we passed in Macro1 as the module name, and main
as the function.
264

Add-ins
Now compile your program making sure that SolidWorks is shut
down and upon successfully building your project VS will inform you
that your project cannot be run directly. Do not worry, your project
has already run the SolidWorks Registration section code and
added itself to the windows registry ready for SolidWorks to find on
next load.

Open up SolidWorks and go to Tools->Add-ins. In there you should

notice your new add-in under the name you defined in the
RegisterFunction code:
public static void RegisterFunction(Type t)
{
...
addinkey.SetValue("Description", "Sample Addin");
addinkey.SetValue("Title", "MyFirstAddin");
...
}

265

Add-ins

As you can see the tooltip shows the add-in file location (which is our
project output folder location), the title and description we set.
Check the box to the left to load our add-in and click OK.
You will now notice that you have a new menu group and item,
named by the name that we gave it in our code, as well as a toolbar
that you can select to show as well:

To get the toolbar to display you have to right-click on any area of

the SolidWorks background with nothing open, or on the top or
bottom toolbars if you have files open to display the menu

266

Add-ins
containing all toolbars. In that menu you will see your new add-in.
Select it to show it:
Try clicking your button or menu
item and see how your function
StartExternalProgram will run,
and effectively open notepad
and run the macro located in the
location you entered.
That is it for our brief overview of add-ins; hopefully you have
learned enough to create some basic menu items, the rest of the
coding is not really to do with add-ins but doing what you actually
want your program to do.
One final note; every add-in you make must have a unique GUID
code at the top:
[Guid("07B6F2FD-74F6-4DEB-BBED-F7AAA0976FB1")]
public class MyFirstAddin : SWPublished.ISwAddin

In order to generate a new code run the project supplied on the CD in

Chapter 9, called GUIDCreator.

267

Add-ins

Removing Add-in entries

Once you have created an add-in if you wish to delete it all you have
to do is go to Start->Run... and type regedit without quotes and
press enter. This will open the Registry Editor. From there go to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\SolidWorks\Addins

Within this entry is all of the add-ins of SolidWorks, including your

own. Just look for your GUID id in the list, or click each and look at
the descriptions to the right. Once found, delete the entire folder.

268