Hi guys, welcome back to my channel. This is a series of videos about SolidWorks scripting using Python. In this video, I'm going to talk about

macros, Visual Basic, and how to connect SolidWorks to Python. Okay, let's start.

I'm going to start a new part, and first of all, I'm going to talk about macros. If you have the macro here, you can use it.

But if you don't have it, you can go to Tools, and here in the Macros, we have different options here, such as Run,

Record, New, and Edit. But personally, I don't like to open the Tools menu and then

go to the Macros section and then start it. So if you come here to Customize in the toolbar menu and scroll down, you can see the Macros

here. So if you check this box, you can have the Macros on your SolidWorks main page. Okay, I'm going to explain

each button here. First, we have Record or Pause Macro. By using this button, you can start recording your actions and do whatever you want in SolidWorks.

The Stop Macro stops the recording, and the Run button can run the previous macro you have recorded. For example, I have a macro here which I can run now.

Okay, we have the New Macro button, which creates a page for you that you can write your own code there from scratch, and we have the Edit Macro, that you can edit your

previous macros. Okay. If I click the Record Macro,

now SolidWorks is recording my actions. I click on the front plane. I create a new sketch and I just want to create a simple circle.

And then I'm going to exit from the sketch. Now I have a very simple circle in my SolidWorks.

Okay, I'm going to stop the macro and I'm going to save it with the name, for example,

Macro3, and just click Save. And now my macro is saved. So I'm going to delete this sketch and I just

I want to know if the macro is working. So, if I click "Run Macro", open my macro, you can see that SolidWorks automatically creates a circle for me on the front plane.

I'm going to delete this sketch once more and I'm going to show you how to edit the macro.

I'm going to open the macro again. Okay, here we are in the Visual Basic

programming language, and all of these codes are written in the VB programming language. In this tutorial, we are going to translate VB code to Python code.

So you need to be familiar with coding and, besides that, know a little about the Visual Basic. It is very simple, and I'm going to

explain it now. In Visual Basic, we have something called "Dim." This is like defining new variables.

We have it, for example, in C++, but we don't have it in Python.

In Python, we don't define the variables in our program. Okay, this is "Dim," you need to know about it.

For example, you can see here in SolidWorks, or in the Visual Basic, SolidWorks defines `swApp` or

SolidWorksApp as an object and, for another example, `boolstatus` as a Boolean. So these are different kinds of variables we have in Visual Basic.

Okay, the next is "Sub" or "Sub Main," which is the main part of our program.

It's like a function in Python and other programming languages. With `Sub Main`, we are going to create a new section and we are going to put our codes here, and at

the end we need to write "End Sub." The next is "Set." "Set" is used to set the value of a property.

For example, here `swApp` is equal to `application.Solidworks`. And we have other lines here. For example, "Set parts = swApp.ActiveDoc"

And this is all you need to know about Visual Basic. The rest of it is very easy, and even if you are a beginner in programming, you

I can easily translate these Visual Basic codes into Python. Okay, I'm going to show you the API help.  There are some documents in the SolidWorks guide for using the Macro API in SolidWorks. So, if you click the help button and then click API help,

you can see the API help, which explains all of the things you can do with macros in SolidWorks. You just need to click the index, and you will be able to search. For example, I'm going to search for "extrude," and when I enter it, I can see everything related to extrude macros in SolidWorks.

And the most important part of this page is the examples. For example, we are going to click this one because we are coding in Visual Basic, and it's easier

to translate it to Python code. If I click it, you can see here a very good example

of how to use extrude using macros in SolidWorks. And here you can see what these codes do. For example, you can read line by line: open a new

part document, and so on. And you can see here we have some "Dims" defining some

parameters, a "Sub main," and here we can see a lot of code related to how to

extrude a part. Okay, now we are familiar with macros, we are familiar with Visual Basic, and

now we can go to Python and start coding in the Python programming language. Personally, I prefer to use Jupyter Notebook because

in my experience, it's easier to manage my code, so I'm going to use Jupyter Notebook in this tutorial.

Okay, I'm going to create a new file. I'm going to name it "getting_started.ipynb".

I'm going to enter it. Now, I have a very nice page to write my code to control the SolidWorks API.

Okay. First of all, we need to use some additional libraries in Python to be able to control SolidWorks. So I'm going to import them.

The first one is "win32com.client". Okay, I'm going to run with "Ctrl+Enter".

So I have this library, and if you don't have this library or other libraries that I will use, you can simply download and install them using "pip".

Okay, the other one is "pythoncom", and I'm going to run it, and everything is okay now.

Okay, I have imported all of the necessary libraries that I needed. So I'm going to just write some code that connects Python to SolidWorks.

I'm just going to paste them here, and I'm going to look at the Visual Basic code. I'm not going to copy this part of the code because

we do not need to define any variables in Python. So I'm just going to copy this part of the code in the Sub main,

"Ctrl+C", and I'm going to paste them here, and I will explain each of them line by line.

This block of code is the code I'm going to write, and this block of code

is the code that I brought from Visual Basic. In the first line, we can see here "swApp = Application.SldWorks".

This is the part where we can actually control SolidWorks through code, and we do not have it in Python directly.

So I'm going to use "win32com.client", and blah, blah, blah. I'm going to write "SLDWORKS.Application". And after that, for the

second line here, we have "Set part = swApp.ActiveDoc". This means we are going to work on the active document,

because in SolidWorks we have a lot of documents available. For example, I can just create another part. And now I have two documents, and Python

doesn't know which one I want to work with, so I'm going to just close Part 8.

And here in the second line, I'm going to say "part = swApp.ActiveDoc". So I'm going to delete this code and be sure

I'm going to run my libraries and then this block of code. Okay, you can see it runs perfectly and smoothly. I'm going to create

another section or another block to write my code here and not run this part again and again. This part is responsible to connect Python to Solidworks, so I don't

need to run it every time; I just need to run a block of code which creates a simple circle for me.

For this line, I'm going to just cut and paste it here.  `boolstatus` is a boolean variable that shows whether this line runs correctly or not.

This means it will go and select things for me, which can be anything, and in this

case it will be the front plane. So, front plane, and it has some default variables. I'm not going to go into detail about what these are; you can

see it in the API help, but we have something here called "Nothing." "Nothing" is a

variable in Visual Basic that we don't have in Python, so I'm going to delete it and

instead I'm going to use `pythoncom.Nothing`, and you can see it will work

perfectly and smoothly. Okay, I'm going to manage my windows to show you how these codes work, and for

the start, they are connected. Python is connected to Solidworks. So, I'm

just going to run this code, this block of code that will select the front plane.  [Ctrl+Enter] You can see it selected the front plane for me. Okay, for the next

lines, I'm going to translate them directly into Python. I'm going to cut this one and paste it here, and this code just creates

a sketch for me, and I'm going to translate it into Python. So, `True` goes inside the parentheses.

And if I run it another time, you can see that a new sketch is created for me in

SolidWorks. I'm going to delete that because I don't need it. Okay, in the next line, I'm going to translate it here.

It will clear the selection for me if I run it. Here you can see that the front plane

was selected, but now it cleared my selection. Now I'm going to delete this line because we don't define any variables in Python. Okay, for the next

line, I'm going to cut it and place it here like this. Okay, I'm going to delete "Set"

and I'm going to delete this symbol. This is a function that creates a circle. I'm going to delete our previous sketch

and this is a line, or this is a function that creates a circle. I'm going to explain each parameter to you,

but it is better to go to API help and see what this create function does for us

because sometimes you're going to face new functions; you don't know what its parameters do, so go to API help.

I copy "CreateCircle" and I'm going to paste it here and enter it. We have

different "CreateCircle" methods; one is under "ModelDoc", another is under "ModelDoc2",

and another one is under "SketchManager". We can see here our "CreateCircle" is under "SketchManager".

So I'm going to enter or click this one: "CreateCircle Method" under "SketchManager".

We can see here Visual Basic, and it's going to talk about how to define our variables and about the parameters that are available

for this method: xc, yc, zc, xp, yp, and zp. And we have here the most important

part: parameters. It explains what each parameter does for us. So, for example, "xc" is the x-coordinate of the center in meters, and

example here
"xp" is the x coordinate of the point on the circle. This means that by using xp, yp, and zp, SolidWorks will calculate the radius of the circle.

So, the first three parameters are the coordinates of the center of the circle; all of them are 0, 0, and 0. The next three are the x, y, and z coordinates of a point that defines the radius

of the circle. I'm just going to show you how to create a circle with a radius of

0.02 meters, which is equal to 20 millimeters. So here I'm just going to write this code, and for the

next three lines, I'm just going to cut and paste them here and translate them into Python.

This line will clear my selection and close the sketch.  In the end, it clears my

selection again to ensure that I haven't selected anything else. I'll manage the windows so you can see how fast and smooth SolidWorks is

at creating a circle. I'm just going to run this block of code. You can see it selects the front plane, creates a new sketch,

draws a circle, and then closes the sketch. I'm going to check the radius of the circle.

And you can see the radius of the circle is 20 mm. As I showed you in the document, these numbers are in meters, not

in millimeters, so be aware that you need to convert millimeters to meters or meters to millimeters.

Okay, I'm going to exit this sketch and save it.

SolidWorks scripting with Python 02 - Macro, Visual Basic, and Python

SolidWorks scripting with Python 02 - Macro, Visual Basic, and Python