There are two interfaces to the Common UI:
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IEFCommonUIApplication
IEFCommonUIApplication is for the tools that support the UI that comes up when the methods for this interface are called.
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IEFCommonUIApplication2
IEFCommonUIApplication2 is for the tools that cannot support the EFCommonUI’s UI. This is mainly for the Intergraph SmartTM 3D Drawing application, which interacts with EFCommonUI in the middle tier of their software where UI is not desirable. The methods and properties of IEFCommonUIApplication2 do not have any UI. It is the tool’s responsibility to expose all the UI required to support integration functionality in the tool’s client and pass the required information to EFCommonUI in the middle tier.
It is recommended that a design tool project integrating with the Common UI interface use early binding by adding a reference to EFCommonUI interface library in the project settings, and use late binding to the implementation object that supports the EFCommonUI Interface. Late binding can be achieved by using the CreateObject method in VB. This recommendation is made to reduce design-time dependency so that changes in the implementation object will not force changes in design tool software.
Here is the sample code for how to create the EFCommonUI.Application2 and EFCommonUI.Application3 object for the IEFCommonUIApplication and IEFCommonUIApplication2 interfaces.
Dim oEFCommonUI as SchemaCompInterfaces.IEFCommonUIApplication
Set oEFCommonUI = CreateObject ("EFCommonUI.Application") ‘where
‘EFCommonUI.Application is the ProgID of implementation object that supports
‘ IEFCommonUIIapplication interface.
Dim oEFCommonUI as SchemaCompInterfaces. IEFCommonUIApplication2
Set oEFCommonUI = CreateObject ("EFCommonUI. EFCommonUIApplication") ‘where
‘EFCommonUI.Application is the ProgID of implementation object that supports
‘ IEFCommonUIIapplication2 interface.