The standalone development editions of Visual Basic 6, which must be purchased separately, complement AutoCAD VBA with additional components, such as an external database engine and report-writing capabilities. This means that AutoCAD, using other application object libraries, can be an Automation controller for other applications such as Microsoft Word or Excel. VBA also provides application integration with other VBA-enabled applications.
The main difference between VBA and VB is that VBA runs in the same process space as AutoCAD, providing an AutoCAD-intelligent and very fast programming environment. Overview of AutoCAD Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) Interface Microsoft VBA is an object-oriented programming environment designed to provide rich development capabilities similar to those of Visual Basic 6 (VB). Please send us your comment about this page Even the drawing and the AutoCAD application are considered objects. The drawing displays such as view and viewport are objects. Organizational structures such as layers, groups, and blocks are objects. Style settings such as linetypes and dimension styles are objects. For example: Graphical objects such as lines, arcs, text, and dimensions are objects. There are many different types of objects in the AutoCAD ActiveX interface. Each exposed object represents a precise part of AutoCAD.
An object is the main building block of any ActiveX application. Sharing data with other Windows® applications, such as Microsoft Excel and Word, is made dramatically easier. Before ActiveX Automation, developers were limited to an AutoLISP® or C++ interface. There are two advantages to implementing an ActiveX interface for AutoCAD: Programmatic access to AutoCAD drawings is opened up to many more programming environments. It does this by exposing AutoCAD objects to the “outside world.” Once these objects are exposed, they can be accessed by many different programming languages and environments and by other applications such as Microsoft® Word VBA or Excel VBA. Overview of AutoCAD ActiveX Technology AutoCAD® ActiveX® enables you to manipulate AutoCAD programmatically from within or outside AutoCAD.
Topics in this section Overview of AutoCAD ActiveX Technology Overview of AutoCAD Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) Interface AutoCAD ActiveX and VBA Together How This Guide Is Organized For More Information Sample Code Migrate Automation Projects Please send us your comment about this page Introduction This introduction describes the concept of exposing AutoCAD objects through an ActiveX Automation interface and programming those objects using the Visual Basic for Applications programming environment. automation projects:migrating to AutoCAD 2004:projects:automation. Color property: TrueColor property:VB:automation projects. ActiveX Automation interface:automation projects.