Hello all:
I am a web programmer who has been thrown into CadCountry. Looking for info regarding how VBA and CAD relate -- I am very familiar with VBA but am a stranger to Cad.
Is it correct/helpful to think of Cad as a component that has an interface recognized by VBA?
Looking forward to your responses...
dp
#2
Dolores,
IntelliCAD exposes its objects through COM/ActiveX and can be programmed in Visual Basic without IntelliCAD VBA. You can use Microsoft Office application such as Word or Excel to access IntelliCAD's objects. The only problem using these programming methods is they run slower than VBA in IntelliCAD because they are "Out of Process" and the VB code must be interpreted prior to processing.
VBA inside IntelliCAD runs "In Process" and is very fast with speeds matching C++ and of course the Forms allow custom applications to be created easily.
If you are familiar with the VBA IDE you only need to brush up on the basics of CAD and its many system variables. VBA allows you to set and retrieve these system variables.
VBA is a Com/ActiveX object by itself and the IDE is a multi-tasking programming environment that all VBA applications use.
To fire up a VBA application from ICAD you need a Lisp (List Processing language) statement and it may pay you to brush up on Lisp and how to access the CAD DXF (Drawing Interchange Files). This is just an ASCII database representation of the drawing in the following format:
HEADER SECTION = variables and their values.
TABLES = Contains LineTypes, Layers, Text Styles, Views, and Viewport configurations.
BLOCKS = block definitions of entities.
ENTITIES = Drawing entities such as lines, circles and polylines etc.
END OF FILE.
Welcome to CAD
------------------
Regards
John Finlay
Don't want to post a question - email me direct on john@acecad.com.au
IntelliCAD exposes its objects through COM/ActiveX and can be programmed in Visual Basic without IntelliCAD VBA. You can use Microsoft Office application such as Word or Excel to access IntelliCAD's objects. The only problem using these programming methods is they run slower than VBA in IntelliCAD because they are "Out of Process" and the VB code must be interpreted prior to processing.
VBA inside IntelliCAD runs "In Process" and is very fast with speeds matching C++ and of course the Forms allow custom applications to be created easily.
If you are familiar with the VBA IDE you only need to brush up on the basics of CAD and its many system variables. VBA allows you to set and retrieve these system variables.
VBA is a Com/ActiveX object by itself and the IDE is a multi-tasking programming environment that all VBA applications use.
To fire up a VBA application from ICAD you need a Lisp (List Processing language) statement and it may pay you to brush up on Lisp and how to access the CAD DXF (Drawing Interchange Files). This is just an ASCII database representation of the drawing in the following format:
HEADER SECTION = variables and their values.
TABLES = Contains LineTypes, Layers, Text Styles, Views, and Viewport configurations.
BLOCKS = block definitions of entities.
ENTITIES = Drawing entities such as lines, circles and polylines etc.
END OF FILE.
Welcome to CAD
------------------
Regards
John Finlay
Don't want to post a question - email me direct on john@acecad.com.au
