Topic: Simulate DWG double click

[WILL HATCH]

Hi All,

I've got an application that displays a list of DWG files, and I'd like to be able to simulate double clicking on the file. Now this is straightforward to do with a line of code

Code - C#: [Select]

1. System.Diagnostics.Process.Start(dwgpath);

BUT

When AutoCAD loads it complains then closes

The security system (softlock license manager)
is not functioning or is improperly installed.

Now if I already have acad open then it's fine.
Anybody run into this before?

Thanks!

[huiz]

I've seen the error a looong time ago. I'm not sure if I would receive the error again with the newest versions, also I do have single user license now so I probably can't reproduce.


If you chain the dwg file to acad.exe instead of the launcher, does it work? You could change your function so that it starts the latest acad.exe with the dwg-file as a parameter.

[dgorsman]

I vaguely remember seeing something like that before.  I don't think it was related to the type of license or version, but trying to do that "double click simulation" process.

I'll second the recommendation of passing it as an argument to the actual application; you'll want to include things like profile, ARX extensions (via "/ld" and "/product" arguments) as appropriate.  Double-clicking from an Explorer window will have the same problems of version, application (TrueView, Navisworks, Civil3D/other verticals, etc.) etc. as with your application.  You might want to consider a right-lick menu instead with a variety of appropriate "Open with/as..." options.

[WILL HATCH]

Thanks, that's what I suspected would be the case. I like the idea of having this just use the environment defaults. Here's a confusing bit: we have both VMs and workstations in the office and it works fine on the VM client.

I did find a solution! You guys were definitely on the right trail. I found a bit on SO that talked about finding the exe associated with the extension, I needed to pass the dwg file path to this function to get the exe associated with it.

Code - C#: [Select]

1. public static bool HasExecutable(string path)
2. {
3.     var executable = FindExecutable(path);
4.     return !string.IsNullOrEmpty(executable);
5. }
6.  
7. private static string FindExecutable(string path)
8. {
9.     var executable = new StringBuilder(1024);
10.     FindExecutable(path, string.Empty, executable);
11.     return executable.ToString();
12. }
13.  
14. [DllImport("shell32.dll", EntryPoint = "FindExecutable")]
15. private static extern long FindExecutable(string lpFile, string lpDirectory, StringBuilder lpResult);

In the process of testing this I copied the filename from the file in windows explorer and pasted it into the path. Next instead of copying this full dwg file path I hit enter and Acad loaded as expected.

Thats when the lightbulb went off... this is being handled by explorer.exe so we must pass the arguments through there!

Code - C#: [Select]

1. System.Diagnostics.Process.Start("explorer.exe", dwgpath);

[huiz]

Ah, good to know