Inventor 2014 – Quickly Create Work Plane Grid

by Luke Davenport

Hello again,

I’ve been spending a fair amount of time with some architectural CAD friends recently, and thinking about best practices for using Inventor in construction. Quite frequently there has been a need to create architectural gridlines that need to be referenced both in the model and the drawing environment. Work planes would be the obvious choice for this, but it can be a little tiresome to create and name dozens of workplanes, as well as the parameters that control their offsets.

Architects don’t always use regularly spaced gridlines you see, so a pattern/array of planes won’t do the job…..

So I thought I’d invest a happy hour to write a quick iLogic macro to automate this for anyone in the same boat.

Just click on the picture above to see a quick video of this in action. Here is the iLogic code:

(As always be careful not to add new lines when copying and pasting this code into a new iLogic rule)

Enjoy!

' Start of iLogic code - remember to subscribe to Luke Davenport's blog

' http://www.cadlinecommunity.co.uk/Blogs/LukeDavenport/Default.aspx

' And why not follow him on twitter @LukeCadline

Imports Inventor.SelectionFilterEnum

Sub Main

Dim Title As String = "Cadline iLogic"

Dim Cont As Boolean = True

Dim Counter As Integer = 1

oDoc = ThisDoc.Document

If oDoc.DocumentType = kAssemblyDocumentObject OrElse oDoc.DocumentType = kDrawingDocumentObject Then

    MessageBox.Show("This tool can only be used in a part file!", Title, _

    MessageBoxButtons.Ok,MessageBoxIcon.Exclamation, _

    MessageBoxDefaultButton.Button1)

    Return

End If

Dim oPartCompDef As PartComponentDefinition = oDoc.ComponentDefinition

Dim oWorkPlanes As WorkPlanes = oPartCompDef.WorkPlanes

Dim oFilter As SelectionFilterEnum

oFilter = kWorkPlaneFilter

' Turn origin planes on

For a = 1 To 3

    oWorkPlanes.Item(a).Visible = True

Next

' Get start plane from user

oStartPlane = ThisApplication.CommandManager.Pick(oFilter, "Select Start Plane")

GridlineName = InputBox("Enter Name of Grid Planes", Title, "GL")

If GridlineName = "" Then

Cleanup(oWorkPlanes)

Return

End If

Call MakePlane(oStartPlane, oWorkPlanes, GridlineName, Counter, Title, False,1000)

Cleanup(oWorkPlanes)

End Sub

Sub MakePlane(ByVal oPlane As WorkPlane, _

              ByRef oWorkPlanes As WorkPlanes, _

              ByVal GridlineName As String, _

             ByRef Counter As Integer, _

              ByVal Title As String, _

              ByRef Finish As Boolean, _

              ByRef StartNo As Double)

Do While Finish = False

CountString = Counter.ToString("D4")

Offset = InputBox("Enter Plane Offset in mm (From Previous)" & vbLf & vbLf & _

"Hit cancel to finish", Title, StartNo)

If Offset = "" Then

    Exit Sub

    Else If Not IsNumeric(Offset) Then

    Exit Sub

End If

' Create work plane

Dim oNewWorkPlane As WorkPlane

oNewWorkPlane = oWorkPlanes.AddByPlaneAndOffset(oPlane, GridlineName & CountString & " = " & CDbl(Offset))

Try

oNewWorkPlane.Name = GridlineName & CountString

Catch

End Try

' Increment counter

Counter += 1

MakePlane(oNewWorkPlane, oWorkPlanes, GridlineName, Counter, Title, False, Offset)

Return

Loop

End Sub

Sub Cleanup(ByVal oWorkPlanes As WorkPlanes)

' Turn origin planes off

For a = 1 To 3

    oWorkPlanes.Item(a).Visible = False

Next

End Sub

' ********************** End of iLogic code **********************