[Closed] Help finding 3dsMax default installation and Bit version

This is by no means a watertight method, and assumes that on a 64-bit machine you would install 32-bit max in program files x86 and 64-bit max in program files, but you could try to test if:

systemTools.getEnvVariable "programfiles(x86)"!=undefined

that way you know if you are on a 64-bit system or a 32-bit system.

Another not amazing option:

((dotnetclass "system.diagnostics.process").getcurrentProcess()).MainModule.filename

you can check if the current running version of max is the executable you found, and assume that if is64bitapplication() returns true then it is 64-bit max, and if not then it is 32-bit max.

Of course, this would not be certain if you had more than 2 executables of max installed (for example, two verisons of 3dsmax each in 32-bit and 64-bit)

There are more options but you have to resort to c#.net.
I’ll see if I can put something up, as I have made a tool that figures this problem out automatically.
-Johan

what methods would use to get the bit type of an EXE without running it as a process?

after googling “c# get file associations” and poking around i found this nice dll at codeproject

download the dll and then getting the path to the 3dsmax.exe which opens by default is easy:

dotnet.loadAssembly @"X:\my path to the dll\AF_FileAssociations.dll"
   a = dotnetobject "Associations.AF_FileAssociator" ".max"
   a.Executable.Path -- returns the path to 3dsmax.exe
   -- note that the path string has an extra set of quotes "" in the string
  so you'll need to use substring or filterstring to get a useable path.
  

EDIT: In case anyone saw it, I was wrong about the first result on google. Not sure how I got to the linked page above. The solution works regardless

   (
   	max32file = (getDir #maxroot) + "max32.task"
   	max64file = (getDir #maxroot) + "max64.task"
   
   	if ((getfiles max32file).count != 0) then
   	(
   		messageBox "You're running a 32-bit version of Max" beep:false
   	)
   
   	if ((getfiles max64file).count != 0) then
   	(
   		messageBox "You're running a 64-bit version of Max" beep:false
   	)
   	
      -- format "
Max32 % 
Max64 %" max32file max64file
   )
   

Of course, it wouldn’t be fullproof if for some reason the files got moved around, but as long as the installation was normally, that might work for you.

Great! That’s exactly what I was looking for! Thanks! :applause:

Glad to hear.

On a 64-bit Windows install, the 32 bit path would contain (x86) in its name (by default), and the 64-bit path would not have “(x86)” in its file path name.

Either way, we just use “getDir #maxroot” to get the correct directory, no matter where Max is installed. Much, much better than hard-coding file paths.

Getting the path to the 3dsMax root folder is not a problem in my case, whether it’s 32bit or 64bit. I essentially get a list of 3dsMax.exe path’s from somewhere else. And I need maxscript to figure out if they are 32 or 64 bit.

And checking whether max32.task exists or not, I can determine if it’s a 32 bit or 64 bit installation.

Thanks again