Check Internal ID

Is there a way to find out the internal ID of a part? I'm thinking of
using it to make sure my students are not copying each others parts.

Thanks,
Jim

 

Only indirectly.

One would think an assembly could be made with student A's part.
Then force the assembly to open with student B's part where A's once
was.
SW should complain that the internal ID is not the same if the two
files are different but have the same filename.

You can also access author, data created and date changed information
in a macro. The chances a particular feature was created at the same
time by two different students are pretty slim.

 

Useing RMB-Feature-Properties pulls up who created the feature,
sketch...

This would be a good check.

-Blair

 

I tried writing a macro to do this. Even in the API, there was no
direct way. The long way around I found was to attempt swapping
identically named copies of parts in a drawing or assembly and see what
happens.

As others stated, checking the feature properties is probably the
easiest route.

 

There are five properties of every feature:

CreatedBy
DateCreated
DateModified
Description
Name

Here is a little something that will go through a part document and
list all these parameters for every feature. Note that a feature will
not show modified time different from create time unless the dimension
is changed through the property manager. I don't know whether you can
get a dimension as a feature with this method.

'
******************************************************************************
' C:\DOCUME~1\KELLNERP\LOCALS~1\Temp\swx332\Macro1.swb - macro recorded
on 07/13/05 by kellnerp
'
******************************************************************************
Dim swApp As Object
Dim Part As Object
Dim boolstatus As Boolean
Dim longstatus As Long, longwarnings As Long
Dim FeatureData As Object
Dim Feature As Object
Dim Component As Object
Dim swFeat As SldWorks.Feature


Sub main()

Set swApp = Application.SldWorks

Set Part = swApp.ActiveDoc

Set Feature = Part.FirstFeature

Do While Not Feature Is Nothing

Debug.Print "Name = ", Feature.Name
Debug.Print "Description = ", Feature.Description
Debug.Print "Created By = ", Feature.CreatedBy
Debug.Print "Created Date = ", Feature.DateCreated
Debug.Print "Modified Date = ", Feature.DateModified

Set Feature = Feature.GetNextFeature()
Loop

End Sub

 

Thank you for all your help. I ended up using this macro to fill in a
listbox.

Jim

 

Just a little FYI, the internal ID is not the author. It is a
time/date encoded stamp that tells SolidWorks if it is the exact same
as another part named the same.

And no, there is no way to read the internal ID except for the example
given above with the student.