Note: this is only a selection of highlights. See the What’s New in Impact 2022 section in the accompanying COM Help guide for further information.
Additional 3D COM controls
A large number of properties and methods have been added to several of the 3D COM objects. These have been added to allow the manipulation of 3D models, and therefore the ability to manually assemble multi-piece designs. Some of the most relevant ones are:
- I3DInstance
- Transform
- Matrix
- I3DScene
- TransformSelected
- I3DMatrix
- Translate
- Rotate
- Scale
- Inverse
- Multiply
- Identity
- Assign
A number of other interfaces have been added as well, such as:
- I3DInstance
- Copy
- Origin
- Position
- Locked
- Extents
- I3DModel
- FoldRatio
- Thickness
Textmode Property
A new Textmode Property (controlling the Inside, Outside or Automatic placement of the text on the dimension entity) has been added. This will allow for reading and setting the Textmode on Angle, Linear, Radius and Sweep type dimensions.
Rubber Object Properties
A whole range of different Rubber Object Properties (including length, angles, offsets, bevelside) has been added to be able to both set and get information on individual rubber pieces.
Persisted Globals
A new Persisted Globals configuration section has been added to Database Installation. The persisted global variables defined in here can be accessed from COM using the IDatabaseSettings.PersistedGlobals method. This allows plugins and scripts to access and store settings, thereby avoiding the need for configuration at each Impact client.
As these settings are saved in the database, it’s possible to synchronise them to all connected Enterprise site databases, reducing and centralising plugin configuration.
The WEBcnx plugin is expected to utilise this functionality in an upcoming release to simplify its deployment.
Tidy Gaps tool now available from COM
The Tidy Gaps tool tidies the selected entities in the active block by attempting to remove gaps between them. This has been available in Impact for many years, but now is available to script and plugin writers. As well as a gap tolerance, the method provides an option to recurse into selected sub-blocks.
Embossing type graphics image support added
Whilst it’s always been possible to add graphic images via COM, so far we have only supported the use of a bitmap image. It’s now possible to specify the use of an image for the purpose of defining an embossing map, which will then affect the bump mapping of any 3D folded models. See ipGraphicType.gtEmbossing
Trigger additional interactive tools from COM
This is done using a new COM method ITools.StartTool( EnglishToolName ), which will queue the tool to start. The English tool name can be found using the Help > What’s This tool. The output from this tool looks something like this:
