CAD Software Forum

I don't want to cause a panic but I believe some further information is required. I found this thread on another ICAD forum:

<B>Okay, official statement:

Today's Vision: not including VBA in intellicad. This means that the
development environment, with the editor and compiler is absent
and COM applications that talk to IntelliCAD have to be made with VB or in
another VBA environment(eg office).

We will make an evaluation, before we make a definitive decision in a major
upgrade. What are our considerations for not adding VBA ;

- we have the impression that it has low use,
- developers who want share or sell applications use VB, not VBA,
- COM can still be used in C++, VB or other VBA environments,
- the size of intellicad install set reduces drastically,
- the freed budget is used for other developments, which are more applicable
for all users. For example in this version I-drop is already integrated, but
still hidden and not documented. We have a whole list of features that will
be integrated in the coming versions.

mvg

Eddy Waermoes </B>

Is this the case for all ICAD suppliers? If so, what happens to the "Professional Version". I am becoming quite fond of VBA.

What is I-drop?

Please provide feedback.

Thank you,

Scott

[This message has been edited by Scott (edited 04-25-2002).]

Scott,

I have seen this and cannot confirm or deny the statement.

What I can say - The object model for VBA is already developed and outsiders to the ITC are working on correcting the COM code. I noticed this during upgrades between ICAD's 2000 and 2001 release.

If we think this through - For the ITC commercial member, the professional version provides their main income and users need some reason to upgrade from the free download. VBA is one very good reason, so it makes sense to maintain this.

Developing in VB means that you are running "out of process" and you may as well run the code in Lisp (same speed).

VBA is new to the CAD world (ACAD R14.1) and it will take time to develop and mature.

Microsoft is committed to VBA as it's third party add-on development environment for the Office suite of products and there are a lot of developers whom would like a low cost CAD package to integrate into their existing add-on's.

I can't realy see this as reality.



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Regards
John Finlay

John,

Thank you for the information and reply.


Scott

I recently asked about this and was told that our company will still have VBA included in our PE version. VBA is an add-on that a company has the option to purchase to bundle with IntelliCAD. At this time we intend to continue to purchase this add-on for our PE version but I cannot speak for others.

Melodie