iLogic for Visual Studio

This project is designed for Autodesk Inventor iLogic code creation and debugging. With minimal updates it works for all actual versions of Inventor.

Requirements

1. Default configuration assumes the Autodesk Inventor 2020 is installed on your computer. Otherwise you need to update Project references for Inventor and iLogic DLL's

2. Visual Studio must be installed

Setup

Download or clone repository to your local computer. Then open it in Visual Studio.

Project references

This project uses iLogic DLL files from its default location.

• Autodesk.iLogic.Interfaces.dll
• Autodesk.iLogic.Runtime.dll
• Autodesk.iLogic.Types.dll

You need to check if it is loaded correctly. Default location is

C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Inventor 2020\Bin\

Reference to Autodesk.Inventor.Interop.dll can be made from Inventor installation path or directly from GAC.

C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Inventor 2020\Bin\Public Assemblies\Autodesk.Inventor.Interop.dll

In both cases it is necessary to check if this referenced assembly has set

Embed Interop Types = False

Rule template

For easy creation of new iLogic rule is there a Visual Studio file template. Download and copy this rule template to your Visual Studio item templates location

%USERPROFILE%\Documents\Visual Studio 2019\Templates\ItemTemplates\

Debugger rule

Add DebuggerRule.iLogicVb to your external rules list in Inventor. Then you need to setup the rule. All settings are located in Main() function at the top of the rule.

Sub Main()
    ' Path to directory with build
    Dim buildDir = "D:\GIT\iLogic4VisualStudio\iLogic4VisualStudio\bin\Debug"

    ' File name of compiled DLL file
    Dim dllFileName = "iLogic4VisualStudio.dll"

    'Name of the class with rule to debug
    Dim ruleName = "SampleRule"

    Dim testedRule As Object = GetTestedRule(buildDir, dllFileName, ruleName)
    If testedRule Is Nothing Then Return

    InitializeiLogicObjects(testedRule)

    'Execute rule Main()
    Logger.Info("Starting rule: {0}", ruleName)
    Call testedRule.Main()
End Sub

1. buildDir - This variable contains the path to build directory of this VS project.

2. dllFileName - This variable contains the file name of the compiled DLL file. You can keep it unchanged by default.

3. ruleName - This variable contains the name of the class which contains a rule code. This can be:

• full class name including namespace
  • Dim ruleName = "iLogic4VisualStudio.SampleRule"
• class name only when the name is unique within this project
  • Dim ruleName = "SampleRule"

Coding

This part describes how to

• Create new rule
• Add some code
• Debug rule

Create new rule

New rule can be dreated from iLogic rule template or from scratch as new VB.NET class

From iLogic rule template

If you have installed iLogic template rule, then only create new class from this template. All minimal requirements are included.

From scratch

If you don't have installed iLogic rule template, you can use default template for empty VB.NET class

In this case you need to inherit this class from RuleBase class because this class contains necesary basic functionality

This is the minimal code for new iLogic rule

Public Class MyNewRule
    Inherits RuleBase

    Public Overrides Sub Main()
        'Your code here
    End Sub
End Class

Add some code

Simple rule can be written in Main() method body only.

Public Class ShowMessage
    Inherits RuleBase

    Public Overrides Sub Main()
        MsgBox("Show some message")
    End Sub
End Class

For larger code the Main() method is mandatory as entry point, but the code can be split to more methods and functions.

Public Class ShowMessage
    Inherits RuleBase

    Public Overrides Sub Main()
        Dim message As String = BuildMessage()
        MsgBox(message)
    End Sub

    Private Function BuildMessage() As String
        Return String.Format("Now is: {0}", DateTime.Now)
    End Function
End Class

Nested types are aslo supported

Public Class ShowMessage
    Inherits RuleBase

    Public Overrides Sub Main()
        Dim messageBuilder As MessageBuilder = New MessageBuilder
        Dim message As String = messageBuilder.BuildMessage()
        MsgBox(message)
    End Sub

    Class MessageBuilder

        Public Function BuildMessage() As String
            Return String.Format("Now is: {0}", DateTime.Now)
        End Function

    End Class
End Class

Debug rule

Before you can debug your code, you need to build this project. Then you open Inventor and verify you have set correct rule name in DebuggerRule.iLogicVb

For above examples:

Dim ruleName = "ShowMessage"

You can attach Visual Studio debugger to Inventor process and then you can set break points and other powerful debuging tools of VS.

Start the DebuggerRule to execute the code.

Extract iLogic code

In this project the code is written as full VB.NET class. For iLogic you need only part of this source code. To extract iLogic code you can copy the appropriate part of code.

• For simple rules it is body/content of Main() method.
• For complex code you need to copy almost all code from rule class. But without the Public Overrides keywords of Main() method.

Limitations

This VS project can be used for all types of external rules. But for internal rules it has some limitations.

Parameters

Because iLogic compiler creates some wrappers for parameters used directly by its names, it is NOT possible to use this access

NOT Possible	This works
MyParam = 2	Parameter("MyParam") = 3