Inventor 2016 – iLogic – Create Multivalue Parameter for Appearances and Materials

By Luke Davenport

Problem:

You want a drop-down list in an iLogic form that allows you to select from a list of materials or appearances. And you want that list to reflect the current contents of a material/appearance library of your choice. 

Solution:

Well its nice and easy to get a multivalue parameter for each material in the active material library, using this single line of iLogic code:

MultiValue.List("param") = iProperties.Materials

But this doesn’t offer you much flexibility if you have more than one potential material library (see this recent blog by Gus), as the active library may not be the correct one.

And unless I’ve missed something, there’s no equivalent line of code for getting a list from an appearance library (active or otherwise). 

So there’s my justification for this blog. And as I’m thinking about Friday’s roast potatoes, I thought I’d use a clumsily modelled Christmas lunch to illustrate. 

Right. So it’s nice and simple. All you need to do is download the iLogic rules below, and adjust the following bits of code to your needs: 

• Change this name to the name of the material (or appearance) library you want to read from.

Dim MatLibraryName As String = "Inventor Material Library"

• Change the name of the “Materials” string below to whatever you like. This will be the name of the multi-value parameter that is created. Be aware that there are certain limitations for the names of parameters in Inventor (must begin with a letter, no spaces/illegal characters etc…) 

' Attempt to set the value of a parameter containing the list of material names

Try

MultiValue.List("Materials") = MaterialArray

Catch

' parameter doesn't exist - create it

Dim oParam As Parameter = oDef.Parameters.UserParameters.AddByValue("Materials", MaterialArray(0), UnitsTypeEnum.kTextUnits)

MultiValue.List("Materials") = MaterialArray

End Try

And that’s it! 

You can download the code below, or alternatively you can download the Inventor part file here.

(Note it’s an Inventor 2016 part file so you won’t be able to open it in a previous release of Inventor)

• Create Material Multivalue List.txt1 KB
• Create Appearance Multivalue List.txt2 KB
• Bowl.ipt1 MB