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Interacting with Other Applications

Scripts and programs built with the SOFTIMAGE|XSI SDK can interact with any other program that supports ActiveX. This means that the possibilities are endless . For example, you can send e-mail, import and export data from spreadsheets, or do anything that you can do with another ActiveX-compliant program.

Getting Information on Supported Methods and Properties

For specific details on the methods and properties supported by the object classes of other ActiveX-compliant programs, refer to their documentation. However, if there is no documentation available, you can try using the Object Browser in Microsoft Visual Basic or the OLE/COM Object Viewer.

Using the Visual Basic Object Browser

You can use the Object Browser provided with Visual Basic to see the properties and methods supported by the various ActiveX-compliant classes installed on your computer.

The Visual Basic Object Browser displays the hierarchy of any set of classes (such as the XSI object model) as a visual cue to help you understand how to use its members. As long as you give Visual Basic access to the library file (*.tlb), which describes the library, including information about inheritance, you can use the Object Browser to load any of the SOFTIMAGE|XSI SDK libraries.

To load the XSI type library into the VB object browser

1. From the Project menu in your Visual Basic environment, select References.

The References window appears.

2. Click on the Browse button.

The Add Reference window appears.

3. Select the library you want to browse (for example, si3dobjectmodel.tlb has most of the native XSI objects you would need to access) and click Open.

The References window appears again with your choice highlighted and selected in the Available References list box.

4. Click OK and then right-click on the code window to bring up the pop-up menu.

5. Click Object Browser in the pop-up menu.

The Object Browser opens, displaying <All Libraries>.

6. From the top left drop-down combo box, select SI3DOBJECTMODELLIB (or whichever XSI library you installed in the browser).

You can now user the object browser to navigate through the XSI type library you installed.

Using the OLE/COM Object Viewer

The OLE/COM Object Viewer is a Windows tool that you can use to see the ActiveX-compliant classes installed on your computer, together with their supported properties and methods. You can download it from:
www.microsoft.com/com/resources/oleview.asp

Example: sending e-mail

The VBScript code that follows can be used to send an e-mail message using Microsoft Outlook. It could be included in another procedure to, for example, send yourself a message when a rendering job is finished.

sub msg( dst, subj, body )
   dim a, b, olMailitem

   set a = createobject( "outlook.application" )
   set b = a.createitem( olMailitem )

   b.to = dst
   b.subject = subj
   b.body = body
   b.send()
end sub

msg "jdoe@acme_inc.com","Your render","has finished."

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