21 Feb 2025

Design Automation CLI tool

There is already a .NET project that can be used to do repetitive tasks (creating/updating app bundle and activity and run work items) created by the Inventor team, but can be used for any of the engines: the "Interaction" project talked about in the Design Automation for Inventor VS template blog post.

When I started playing with Design Automation for Fusion (soon to be in beta and will be talked about at DevCon) I needed something that worked on my Mac.
Yes, I know, I could have used a .NET project too, but I thought it could be useful to have a Node.js version as well.

It was nice that after each modification of the script of the app bundle I wanted to run on Design Automation, I could just run the Node.js project to both zip up the app bundle folder & upload it and run the work item with a single click. 

Here is the project: https://github.com/autodesk-platform-services/aps-da-cli

By the way, if you just want to run small scripts, instead of an app bundle, that is supported by AutoCAD, 3ds Max and Inventor, then this other utility could also be useful:
Run iLogic Rule without AppBundle

It's also worth noting that for one-off operations you can also use UI based tools like Design Automation Tools or our VS Code Extension.

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