The API parts management extension feature can be used to add your own custom information to parts stored in the Eplan parts database. It is intended for information that you don't want to set as part properties. 

You store this information in your own database and can attach it to the part and visualize it. When a part that references such custom information is exported or stored in a project, the information is stored as a string in the indexed  ARTICLE_CUSTOM_DATA_INDEX  and  ARTICLE_CUSTOM_DATA_VALUE  properties. The first property contains the name of the add-in to which the information belongs, and the second property contains the data string at the same index position. 

To use this feature, you need to create an add-in. In this add-in, you must call the  MDPartsManagement.RegisterAddin(<Add-inName>, <ActionName>)  and  MDPartsManagement.RegisterItem(<Add-inName>, <ItemType>)  methods.

• <Add-inName>: Assembly name of your add-in, which is usually the DLL title without the extension  .dll.
• <ActionName>: In your add-in, you implement an action with the name you set in the  <ActionName>  parameter. This action will be called on different events in the parts management.
• <ItemType>: Specifies the kind of item for which you want to add the additional information or whose changes should trigger the events. Set the string  eplan.part  for parts or the following values:

Possible values of the ItemType parameter

You can register multiple item types in your add-in:

MDPartsManagement mDPartsManagement = new MDPartsManagement();
mDPartsManagement.RegisterAddin("YourAddInName", "YourActionName");
mDPartsManagement.RegisterItem("YourAddInName", "eplan.part");
mDPartsManagement.RegisterItem("YourAddInName", "eplan.construction");
mDPartsManagement.RegisterItem("YourAddInName", "eplan.accessoryplacement");

Define a custom item type

It is also possible to define your own custom items in the parts management tree. You have to register your personal item as custom item type and use it instead of the predefined Eplan item types from the list above. For this, call the  MDPartsManagement.RegisterItem(<Add-inName>, <ItemType>)  method with your custom item type name as a string:

mDPartsManagement.RegisterItem("YourAddInName", "YourCustomItemType");

Events that call your action

The action that you implemented in your add-in and specified as  <ActionName>  parameter will then be called on different events in the parts management. Depending on the event, different parameters are passed to and returned via the  ActionCallingContext  each time as you can see in the list below. The  action  parameter is always set and represents the name of the event that was invoked. The  action  parameter can contain the following values: 

Possible values of the action parameter in the ActionCallingContext

Inside of the  Execute  method of the action that you defined in your add-in, you can handle the events handed over via  action  parameter in the  ActionCallingContext  as shown in the example below exemplarily for  AddPartToProject,  SelectItem,  SaveItem  and  OpenDatabase.

The API parts management extension allows event handling for the Parts management dialog. Here, for example, the Parts management dialog event  SaveItem  is triggered as soon as the  action  parameter in the the  ActionCallingContext  takes the value  SaveItem:

public bool Execute(ActionCallingContext ctx)
{
    string action = "";
    ctx.GetParameter("action", ref action);
    switch (action)
    {
        case "AddPartToProject":
            // Do something when a part information is added to the project
            break;
        case "SelectItem":
            // Do something when a part is selected
            break;
        case "SaveItem":
        {
            Eplan.EplSDK.WPF.EEvent.WPFDialogEventManager em = new Eplan.EplSDK.WPF.EEvent.WPFDialogEventManager();
            em.send("XPartsManagementDialog", "SaveItem", sKey);
        }
            break;
           
        case "OpenDatabase":
            // Do something when the API parts management extension information is read
            break;
    }
    return true;
}

Add a custom tab / dialog

You can add custom tabs to the Parts management dialog to display your additional information on a custom dialog. To do this, you must call the  MDPartsManagement.RegisterTabsheet

(<Add-inName>, <ItemType>, <TabsheetName>)  method. As  <TabsheetName>  you need to specify your custom WPF-dialog (in XAML format) that will be shown when an item of the correspronding item type is selected:

mDPartsManagement.RegisterTabsheet("YourAddInName", "eplan.part", "YourPartsTabsheetName");
mDPartsManagement.RegisterTabsheet("YourAddInName", "YourCustomItemType", "YourCustomItemTabsheetName");

The API parts management extension event handling for the Parts management dialog also works for your custom dialogs. In the following example, the  SaveItem  event of the Parts management dialog is subscribed to. As a result, whenever an item is saved in the dialog, the  YourDialog_SaveItem  method of a custom dialog class can now handle the data of the item to be saved:

public class YourDialog : UserControl, IDialog
{
    public YourDialog()
    {
        InitializeComponent();
        Eplan.EplSDK.WPF.EEvent.WPFDialogEventManager em = new Eplan.EplSDK.WPF.EEvent.WPFDialogEventManager();
        em.getOnWPFNotifyEvent("XPartsManagementDialog", "SaveItem").Notify += new Eplan.EplSDK.WPF.Interfaces.EEvent.NotifyEvent(YourDialog_SaveItem);
    }

    void YourDialog_SaveItem(string data)
    {
        // Handle your data to be saved in here
    }
}