A design is processed by an Inventor plugin so one has to author plugin code. The resulting plugin is then packaged into an Inventor bundle and zipped. This is done by the samplePlugin project in the solution. Packaging is done using a post-build step of the project. When you build the project you can find the resulting bundle zip samplePlugin.bundle.zip in the Solution/Output/ directory.
In order to instruct the Design Automation service to run your plugin code, it must be delivered. This is done by:
- Creating an AppBundle object on Design Automation using the REST API. You can think of an AppBundle object as metadata describing your plugin for Design Automation usage.
- When you create an AppBundle object, Design Automation instructs you where and how to upload your zipped and bundled plugin binaries.
This workflow is done in this sample in the clientApp project.
Create AppBundle documentation
In order to use your AppBundle you have to create an Activity. In an Activity you can describe how to handle inputs and outputs for the AppBundle. This is also done using the Design Automation REST API.
This is done in this sample in the clientApp project.
To deliver your inputs to Design Automation to process, you have to upload them on the internet so that Design Automation can download them when the Activity is executed.
This workflow is done in this sample in the clientApp project. You can find sample inputs in Solution/clientApp/inputFiles/ folder.
To execute the activity you have to create a WorkItem. A WorkItem is a representation of an executed task. You can monitor its state, so you know if it is still in progress or done. You have to specify where Design Automation can download inputs and where it should upload outputs (results) according to what is written in the Activity.
This is done in this sample in the clientApp project.
As mentioned earlier, your outputs are uploaded to the place you specified when creating your WorkItem and to get them onto your local machine you should download them. There is also a report file where you can see what was happening.
This is done in this sample in the clientApp project. Results are downloaded into your Documents folder