Hi,

Thanks for reading this question in advance.

I'm using SolidWorks 2012 SP2, and I'm developing SolidWorks add-in(DLL) using C++ COM in the VS2010 IDE.

What I'd like to implement is to traverse all mates in an assembly and extract all necessary information.

That assembly may contain several assemblies.

So I could create a simple function like this:

VARIANT_BOOL CSwAssembly::GetMateInformation(const CComPtr& pSourceMate, long& nMateType, CComPtr& pMateEntity0, CComPtr& pMateEntity1, long& nMateEntityType0, long& nMateEntityType1, CComPtr& pComp0, CComPtr& pComp1, double* pEntityParams)

{

          HRESULT hres = VARIANT_FALSE;

  hres = pSourceMate->get_Type(&nMateType);

          if(hres == S_OK) hres = pSourceMate->MateEntity(0, &pMateEntity0);

          ATLASSERT(pMateEntity0);

          if(hres == S_OK) hres = pSourceMate->MateEntity(1, &pMateEntity1);

          ATLASSERT(pMateEntity1);

          if(hres == S_OK) hres = pMateEntity0->get_ReferenceType2(&nMateEntityType0);

          if(hres == S_OK) hres = pMateEntity1->get_ReferenceType2(&nMateEntityType1);

          if(hres == S_OK) hres = pMateEntity0->get_ReferenceComponent(&pComp0);

          ATLASSERT(pComp0);

          if(hres == S_OK) hres = pMateEntity1->get_ReferenceComponent(&pComp1);

          ATLASSERT(pComp1);

          long nSize;

          if(hres == S_OK) hres = pMateEntity0->GetEntityParamsSize(&nSize);

          if(hres == S_OK) hres = pMateEntity0->IGetEntityParams(nSize, pEntityParams);

          if(hres == S_OK) return VARIANT_TRUE ;

          else return VARIANT_FALSE ;

}

And I call this function in the recursive iteration process of traversing the mates from the top assembly.

But sometimes, the pComp0(CComPtr) gets the null pointer even its corresponding IMateEntity2 is not null.

So I tried to see the reference manual of IMateEntity2::ReferenceComponent() function. And I could find a description there:

'The component instance tree of a subassembly is not loaded because a subassembly does not have a view of its own. Thus, this property returns NULL if the Inplace mate is in a subassembly. '

But I could not know whether an IMate2 can be an IMateInPlace.

The example assembly that I could see the problem is here:

In the "C:\Program Files\SolidWorks Corp\SolidWorks\samples\tutorial\api" folder, there is 'wrench.sldasm' file.

I attached two capture images of the mate that makes this problem.

I'd very appreciate if I can any kind of advice from you experts.