I’m trying to unload add-ins from SOLIDWORKS upon startup.
My user domain has some security policy that do not allow for registry keys edits.
I have tried looking for a magic command line argument would launch SOLIDWORKS without add-ins and that search did not go anywhere. Anyone is welcome to share this one if they know it…
It seems that the only path forward is to :
Find all the CLSIDs from the AddInsStartUp node in the registry under CurrentUser\Software\SOLIDWORKS
Launch SOLIDWORKS using the /r /b arguments.
Wait for SOLIDWORKS to finish loading add-ins.
Inspect which add-ins are loaded using SldWorks::GetAddInObject == null
Find the dll path of the loaded add-ins in the registry using InprocServer32
Unload add-ins using SldWorks::UnloadAddIn.
The add-ins seem to load one at a time. That’s one problem of two.
The second issue is if one add-in has a UI that blocks the main thread, the whole application stops for user input and can’t inspect what has not loaded yet.
I try to blindly unloaded all the CLSIDs but that circle back to the point if the UI is blocked then the add-ins I’m unloading will finish loading until the user input is completed.
I wonder if there is a smart to go around this via a event handler?
This code loads a SW window with no add-ins active. I was playing around with how to open a specific version of SW but both methods open an instance without add-ins. I’m not 100% sure why, but maybe this will help.
My issue with this approach is that the add-ins aren’t shown in the Tools → Add-Ins menu anymore. There are usually twice this number of add-ins to select.
using SolidWorks.Interop.sldworks;
using System.Runtime.InteropServices;
using System;
namespace OpenSolidworks
{
class Program
{
static void Main()
{
StartSW();
}
private static void StartSW()
{
var progId = "SldWorks.Application.26";
var progType = System.Type.GetTypeFromProgID(progId);
var app = System.Activator.CreateInstance(progType) as SolidWorks.Interop.sldworks.ISldWorks;
app.Visible = true;
Marshal.ReleaseComObject(app);
app = null;
}
private static void StartSW2()
{
SldWorks swApp = new SldWorks();
swApp.Visible = true;
Marshal.ReleaseComObject(swApp);
swApp = null;
}
}
}
You mention that you cannot edit the registry, does this apply to the Current User Registry? As this is basically designed to be writable even in non-administrative user? Or are you creating a new app domain and thus do not have access to the registry? The way I solved this in xCAD is to disable add-ins from the registry before starting and restore after: xcad/SwApplicationFactory.cs at c70d6f945802644ec0d869022765886d948420e5 · xarial/xcad · GitHub
As this is only a modified Current User Registry you do not have to have elevated permissions to run this code.
