{"id":18,"date":"2008-08-17T23:11:28","date_gmt":"2008-08-17T17:41:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.smallguru.com\/?p=17"},"modified":"2008-08-17T23:11:28","modified_gmt":"2008-08-17T17:41:28","slug":"introduction-to-autodesk-inventor-api-and-customization","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ar-cad.com\/smallguru\/2008\/08\/introduction-to-autodesk-inventor-api-and-customization\/","title":{"rendered":"Introduction to Autodesk Inventor API and Customization"},"content":{"rendered":"

Update: IN-Motion, a Motion and Dynamic Simulation Addin for Autodesk Inventor has been launched by us.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Update: Video tutorials on usage of IN-Motion for Dynamic Simulation of Autodesk Inventor Assemblies.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Autodesk For those in CAD (Computer Aided Design)<\/a> field, Autodesk<\/a> would have been a very common company they would have come across. One of the most famous CAD software, AutoCAD<\/a> belongs to their stable. Autodesk Inventor<\/a> is somewhat an extension of AutoCAD, specific for Manufacturing section and deals mainly with 3D CAD, solid modeling of parts and then building assemblies out of them, Rapid Prototyping<\/a> and many more advanced features. Inventor has been a great success in this field and it is evident from the fact that there are more than 800,000 official licensed users of Inventor<\/a> across the world.<\/p>\n

One of the strong points for the success is the fact that Autodesk has opened its API (Application Program Interface)<\/a> to developers who can extend the base product to fit into their requirements. This is called Customization of the CAD package. Inventor also has its API exposed to developers through COM (Component Object Model)<\/a> interface using which developers can customize the base installation of Inventor to tailor made needs such as automating a certain process or developing addins\/ addons\/ plugins which do specific task.<\/p>\n

For those, who want to get started with Inventor API customization using their SDK (Software Development Kit), the following steps can be followed.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Introduction to Inventor API and VBA (Visual Basic for Applications).<\/a> The attached document is from Autodesk University<\/a> of 2003. Though it may seem to be old, its a very good starting point and the code works even in latest versions of Inventor.<\/li>\n
  2. You may also consider going through the 3 part series of Focused VBA for Inventor, which is a part of AUGI Training Program<\/a> (2007) : Part 1<\/a>, Part 2<\/a> and Part 3<\/a>.<\/li>\n
  3. Visit Inventor Customization page<\/a> and get more insight, by watching 1 hour video on Basics of Inventor API and developing addins for Inventor (DevTV: Introduction to Inventor Programming <\/strong>)<\/li>\n
  4. Decide upon which .NET technology you would be comfortable in developing Addins and Standalone applications (Either of VB.NET, VC++ or Visual C#)<\/li>\n
  5. Browse through Inventor Customization forum<\/a> to get more insights, code examples and also problems faced by other developers and also an active Autodesk support team which answers those queries<\/li>\n
  6. If you happen to progress well, consider joining Autodesk Developers Network (ADN)<\/a> and also attend AUGI Training Programs (ATP)<\/a><\/li>\n
  7. Also you can keep a track on my Blog as I would be trying to pen down my learning, developing full fledged Addins for Inventor and also other major CAD software.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Update: IN-Motion, a Motion and Dynamic Simulation Addin for Autodesk Inventor has been launched by us. Update: Video tutorials on usage of IN-Motion for Dynamic Simulation of Autodesk Inventor Assemblies. For those in CAD (Computer Aided Design) field, Autodesk would … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9,2,5],"tags":[10,12,13,32,33,20,37],"class_list":["post-18","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-autodesk-inventor","category-cad","category-inventor-customization","tag-3d-cad","tag-api-customization","tag-ar-cad","tag-autodesk-inventor","tag-cad","tag-cad-customization","tag-visual-c"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ar-cad.com\/smallguru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ar-cad.com\/smallguru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ar-cad.com\/smallguru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ar-cad.com\/smallguru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ar-cad.com\/smallguru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ar-cad.com\/smallguru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ar-cad.com\/smallguru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ar-cad.com\/smallguru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ar-cad.com\/smallguru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}