Hide first element of a circular pattern feature of a boundary patch

By Xiaodong Liang

The question is to to hide the first element of a circular pattern feature of a boundary patch using the API.  The first element is the original boundary patch. There are two ways to hide it:

way1:

BoundaryPatchFeature.SurfaceBody.Visible = False

way2:

BoundaryPatchFeature.SurfaceBody.Parent.Visible = False

with way1, before Inventor 2012, the first element is hidden
but if the file is closed and re-opened the first element is visible again. So we have to use way2.

Following is the code demo.

Sub test()

 

    Dim inventorAppType As Type =

        System.Type.GetTypeFromProgID("Inventor.Application")

    InvApp =

        System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal.

        GetActiveObject("Inventor.Application")

 

    Dim oDoc As PartDocument

    oDoc = InvApp.ActiveDocument

 

    Dim oBoundPatchFeature As BoundaryPatchFeature

    oBoundPatchFeature =

        oDoc.ComponentDefinition.Features.

        CircularPatternFeatures(1).ParentFeatures(1)

 

    ' way 1:

    ' before Inventor 2012, The first element is hidden

    ' but if the file is closed and re-opened the first

    ' element is visible.

 

    'oBoundPatchFeature.SurfaceBody.Visible = False

 

    'way 2:

    Dim oWorkSurface As WorkSurface =

        oBoundPatchFeature.SurfaceBody.Parent

    oWorkSurface.Visible = False

 

End Sub