Getting Started: SOLIDWORKS PDM API Development

This section introduces to SOLIDWORKS PDM API. It explains the differences between PDM add-ins and stand-alone application and provides detailed guidelines of creating the ones.

The root object in SOLIDWORKS PDM API is a IEdmVault5 which provides an access to various section of the functionality.

This interface can be explicitly cast to another manager interfaces, such as IEdmAddInMgr9, IEdmRevisionMgr3, etc.

The most popular way of extending the system is by implementing the add-in via IEdmAddIn5 SOLIDWORKS PDM API interface.

Interops in .NET

If you are building the application in .NET (C# or VB.NET) you will need to use SOLIDWORKS PDM API interop to access the signatures of API methods.

Framework 4.0 or newer

You need to add the reference to EPDM.Interop.epdm.dll which is located in the installation folder of PDM (usually C:\Program Files\SOLIDWORKS PDM\EPDM.Interop.epdm.dll).

Note, although you can add the reference to EdmInterface.dll (type library) this will generate the Interop.EdmLib.dll which can be used by .NET, however this interop will not have a strong name which may introduce conflicts with other add-ins.

It is recommended to set the Embed Interop Types option to False for the interop otherwise the add-in may misbehave.

Framework 2.0 or older

Newer versions of SOLIDWORKS PDM do not provide the interop compatible with .NET Framework 2.0 or older. So it is required to generate this interop from the type library (EdmInterface.dll).

Either add this reference directly to your project (usually C:\Program Files\SOLIDWORKS PDM\EdmInterface.dll), this will generate the Interop.EdmLib.dll in the bin folder after rebuild which you can reference by other projects.

Or alternatively use the tlbim.exe utility to generate the interop using the following command:

> TlbImp.exe "EdmInterface.dll" "/out:Interop.EdmLib.dll" /namespace:EdmLib