SwEx is a free and open-source framework which is designed to simplify development of SOLIDWORKS add-ins in .NET (C# and VB.NET).

Frameworks hides the complexity and allows developing robust solutions which are scalable, type safe, reliable and easily maintainable.

Main features of the framework:

• Registering Add-In. To Register add-in just add the AutoRegister attribute (no need to run custom regasm commands, no need to call any static classes)
• Adding Commands. Commands can be defined by creating an enumerations. Commands can be customized by adding attributes to assign title, tooltip, icon etc. Commands can be grouped under sub menus. Simply specify the image (transparency is supported) and framework will create required bitmaps compatible with SOLIDWORKS. No need to assign gray background to enable transparency, no need to scale images to fit the required sizes - simply use any image and framework will do the rest. Use resources to localize the add-in.
• Managing Documents Lifecycle and Events. Framework will manage the lifecycle of documents by wrapping them in the specified class and allows to handle common events.
• Reading and Writing to 3rd Party Storage and Store. It has never been easier to read and write data to the internal SOLIDWORKS file storage. Simply override the corresponding event and serialize/deserialize the data using XML, DataContract, Binary etc. serializers.
• Hosting User Controls In SOLIDWORKS Panels (Task Pane). Just specify User Control to host and framework will do the rest:

More information: SwEx.AddIn