win32, COM, and Solidworks (again) - Still Trying

[Markus Wankus]

On Thu, 07 Aug 2003 21:08:21 +1000, Mark Hammond 
<mhammond at skippinet.com.au> wrote:

> Markus Wankus wrote:
>
>> Hmmm...'Not Implemented'.  Because this fails, I can't obtain the CLSID 
>> of itself, thus it can't use the makepy generated code to bind itself 
>> properly.  I always get back dumb CDispatch objects.  I have been trying 
>> to hack a way of getting the CLSID of the dispatch object, but it just 
>> isn't there.
>>
>> Anyway - if anyone reading this knows anything about what I am talking 
>> about, your help would be greatly appreciated.
>
> You should use code similar to:
>
> mod = gencache.EnsureModule("...", ...)
>
> ob = Dispatch("Whatever.Object")
> # ob now "dumb dispatch", but should be object "foo"
> # in the gencache module
> # Explicitly convert ob to one of these object.
> ob = mod.Foo(ob)
>
> Mark.
>
>

Thanks, Mark.  That's what I have been doing in the past (on your advice), 
but I have been trying to automate that process and found it next to 
impossible (from what I can figure out anyway).  The reason this is an 
incredible pain is that every single method or attribute of 'ob' that 
returns an object, returns a dumb object.  I need to know what class it is 
*supposed* to be, and run it through the gencache module class constructor. 
 This is a huge pain.

I realize this is nothing to do with win32all - it is Solidworks.  Is there 
a way I can tell them about this problem and possibly get them to fix it?  
What have they not done in their C++ code that is making their 
implementation of COM so stupid?

If there was a away I could make my own Dispatch class that forced this re- 
instantiation I would be happy, but I can't see any way to figure out what 
gencache class I need for a given object at runtime.  I wonder if I could 
somehow generate my own, smarter module from scratch using the gencache 
module as a starting point.  It would be incredibly painful...

Anyway - thanks again for your help, Mr. Hammond.  Perhaps I should let 
this drop already and accept the fact that it can't easily be done...

-- 
Mark