Importing Autodesk.AutoCAD in VB.NET

Question

For my project, I need to generate CAD drawing (almost a blueprint of a tank) through my VB.NET application. The app takes in some user input & based on this, it generates the geometry of the tank.

I am using Microsoft Visual Studio Professional 2012 & coding in the VB.NET language.

I have browsed through a lot of AutoCAD documentation but could not find exactly how & where are the modules hidden, for me to add them into my code.

I stumbled accross one particular document which is where I found how to add the relevant files as reference to my VB solution. However, after adding some particular files I could then do Imports AutoCAD, but all the docs show that I must use Autodesk.AutoCAD. On inspection of the available modules/methods of the Imports AutoCAD I can see that it isn't complete as needed for the application development.

Can somebody please guide me as to how could I find or go about adding correct reference files to my VS solution to get full functionality from the AutoCAD modules? Thanks!

Answer 1

I posted this quite some time ago. It contains the information that you need

How to close a file in Autocad using C# keeping acad.exe running?

You can also download any of the AutoCAD .NET API's from here:

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?id=1911627&siteID=123112

Just in case someone else need the help.

1. Download the appropriate AutoCAD .NET API using the aforementioned link.
2. Put them in a location of your choosing.

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general:

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on the appropriate project in your visual studio's solution, right click -> Add Reference.

select Browse on left, click the browse button and go to the path where you saved the ObjectARX download.

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Inprocess:

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Navigate to the inc directory and select the AcDbMgd.dll and AcMgd.dll then click add.

For these make sure to set the copy local property to false.

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Interop:

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Navigate to the appropriate directory: inc-win32 or inc-x64 depending on your processor. select the Autodesk.AutoCAD.Interop.Common.dll and Autodesk.AutoCAD.Interop.dll then click add.

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and unless you have an interest in the AutoCAD interface don't worry about the AcCui.dll

Hope this helps some one out :)

Answer 2

So, looking up more & more documentation led me to stumble across this

I found the dlls by simple file search for respective dlls metioned below in my local AutoCAD 2014 installation folder (C:\Program Files\Autodesk\AutoCAD 2014)

As per the documentation, following dlls are important ones -

1. AcCui.dll
2. acdbmgd.dll
3. acmgd.dll
4. Autodesk.AutoCAD.Interop.dll
5. Autodesk.AutoCAD.Interop.Common.dll

The credit for the last 2 dlls goes to Trae Moore.

How to add references to the dlls was mentioned in the documentation link.