MS Office

Office2PDM addin for MS Office

Users have long enjoyed the ability to check their SolidWorks files into and out of the Enterprise PDM vault from directly inside of SolidWorks. This is because Enterprise PDM has something called the CAD Editor that is a SolidWorks Addin that runs directly inside of SolidWorks.

Extensible CAD Technologies has developed an office editor to enable users to work with their MS Word, Excel and Powerpoint files in exactly the same way. Currently, users must close their MS Office files and then operate on them in Windows explorer.

Although we haven’t released the application for sale just yet, we are very close. In the meantime, we are offering a free beta version on our website to anyone who is willing to try it out and give us feedback. You can download the beta version from here: Office2PDM Beta

Note: We still have a little work to do including the help file. Also, after you save a new document you must hit the Refresh button. This is a temporary workaround and will be resolved shortly.

Send all feedback to support@extensiblecad.com

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Extensible CAD will be exhibiting in booth #2 at SolidWorks World this year.  We will be showing InspectionXpert for SolidWorks, InspectionXpert First-Article and Office2PDM.  InspectionXpert is software that automates the creation of first article inspection sheets from CAD drawings.  Office2PDM is an addin for MS Office that enables you to work with Enterprise PDM from inside of Word, Powerpoint and Excel.

I will also be presenting personally on Enterprise PDM Customization on Monday at 1:30pm.  Unfortunately they scheduled me at the same time as Joy Garon’s What’s New In EPDM 2009 but that is just how it goes.  Stop by my session if you can and if not, then stop by our booth and say hello.

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At the end of my last post on this topic, I promised you that I would share a “dirty secret” so I guess I now have to come clean. FYI – “Dirty secret” may have been a bit strong but it sounded cool (at least to me). Anyways, there is a difference between how SolidWorks handles CreateObject( ) and how MS Office products handle CreateObject( ). This is something to be aware of when automating across applications.

What is the difference? In a nutshell, calling CreateObject( ) on an MS Office application interface will always create a new instance of the application and then return a handle to that instance. Calling CreateObject( ) on the SldWorks.Application interface will only create a new instance of SolidWorks if one isn’t already running. This basically ensures that only one instance of SolidWorks at a time is ever automated by your Macro. This is a basic coding pattern called “the Singleton” and it prevents untold suffering and countless tears. SolidWorks is so kind to us and many of us didn’t even know it.

Below are two Macros continue

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Last time I explained how the SolidWorks application object behaves differently depending on whether it is instantiated via CreateObject( ) or GetObject( ). So now you are probably thinking, “That’s it? That was too easy.” Well, I don’t want to be one to disappoint so I will let you in on the rest of the story including a dirty little secret.

So what else is there? The GetObject( ) call has another trick up its sleeve that I didn’t discuss last time. Taking a look at its Intellisense signature provides a clue as to what this is.

In the method signature you actually see two parameters, continue

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Disclaimer: 99.9% of all the API programming I do these days is in .NET so for the times that I do answer a question incorrectly, 80% of the time it is a VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) question. Since most people start with VBA before they move on to .NET, however, I decided to cover this topic for VBA.

Set swApp = CreateObject(“SldWorks.Application”)

Almost all SolidWorks Macros start out with that same, famous line of code. In fact, whenever you record a Macro in SolidWorks, the SolidWorks Macro Recorder is kind enough to fill that line in for you. What does it really mean, though? And why do a few Macros begin instead with this line of code:

Set swApp = GetObject(,”SldWorks.Application”)

continue

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