VBA EXCEL VBA How to enable (check) specific Type Library in Tools/References programmatically?

Question

That's basically my question. Doing googling didn't return anything that I am looking for, but basically I am running SOLIDWORKS from Excel and for that I need "sldworks 2016 Type Library" and "SOLDIWORKS 2016 Constant Type Library" to be enabled. Of course you'd say to do it manually, BUT my program is being run both, by people with and without Solidworks installed and if a user doesn't have SOLDIWORKS on their PC - the entire thing won't even run. So I am looking to enable and disable those two type libraries upon necessity in the code.

Could, someone, please help me?

P.S. I am not looking for any workarounds etc.

Answer 1

BUT my program is being run both, by people with and without Solidworks installed and if a user doesn't have SOLDIWORKS on their PC - the entire thing won't even run.

Is this what you are trying? The below code will first try to bind with an open instance of SOLIDWORKS. If it is not open, then it will try to create a new instance. Obviously if SOLIDWORKS is not installed then the CreateObject will fail but the code will not crash because of On Error Resume Next. Finally check if objSolid is not nothing. This is late binding and you do not have to set any references.

Dim objSolid As Object
    
'~~> Establish an SOLIDWORKS application object
On Error Resume Next
Set objSolid = GetObject(, "SldWorks.Application")

'~~> If not found then create new instance
If Err.Number <> 0 Then Set objSolid = CreateObject("SldWorks.Application")
Err.Clear
On Error GoTo 0

If objSolid Is Nothing Then
    MsgBox "SOLIDWORKS not installed"
    Exit Sub
End If

'
'~~> Rest of your code
'

EDIT

You cannot say Solidworks is not properly documented without putting in the right efforts to search. It took me less than 30 seconds to find this SOLIDWORKS Example of Late Binding. Of course their code will fail if the user doesn't have SOLIDWORKS and that is because they have not done proper error handling. My answer above does that for you.

Their website has all the information that you need. You just need to put in the right efforts to search. As I mentioned in the chat below, when you convert the code into late binding, you will have to search for the value of those constants. No one will give them to you in a platter. :) You can either search Google with swDocPART Constant value or as @FunThomas pointed out, type ?swDocPART in Immediate Window to get the value when the reference to SOLIDWORKS has been established.