Need to control 3rd party application that does not support automation 1

[SBendBuckeye]

Hello all,

We have a 3rd party engineering application that we need to automate (even though it does not support automation). Using file associations, I can start the application with the following code:

System.Diagnostics.Process.Start(Me.txtOutputFile.Text.Trim)

It has a menu shortcut for F10 to start the process I need to watch.

Basically, I need to do the equivalent of SendKeys to the hWnd and then monitor some child windows to determine when it has completed. Can anyone point me or get me started? Thanks in advance for any ideas and/or suggestions!

 

[arznrchrd]

Use user32.dll for this. You can get the window handles, button handles, etc and you can use PostMessage function to send commands to the 3rd party program or process. Do a search on user32.dll; it has a lot of functions for automating a 3rd party application that does not have an API.