{"id":1284,"date":"2012-12-10T21:39:12","date_gmt":"2012-12-10T16:09:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mohamediqbalp.wordpress.com\/?p=1284"},"modified":"2012-12-10T21:39:12","modified_gmt":"2012-12-10T16:09:12","slug":"autocad-with-net-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/venusimportexport.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/2012\/12\/10\/autocad-with-net-2\/","title":{"rendered":"AutoCAD with .NET 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lesson 2: Getting to Know your Development Environment<\/h1>\n
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In
the previous lesson, you saw how you can increase productivity in
AutoCAD by implementing a plug-in built from a small amount of Visual
Basic .NET code. <\/p>\n

.NET (or
the .NET Framework) is a technology created by Microsoft that enables
programmers to create and extend software applications. A programmer may
use the ,NET Framework to create a new software application from
scratch, to implement communication or interoperability between two
software applications, or to extend a software application by
implementing a plug-in for it (as you are doing here for AutoCAD). If
you are interested in learning more, you will find information in the Additional Topics<\/a> section.<\/p>\n

You will now look more closely at what happened when you built and executed the code in the previous lesson.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n

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Provide Feedback<\/b>: Please provide feedback about this AutoCADTraining or this lesson via email: myfirstplugin@autodesk.com<\/a> <\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n
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What does it mean to \u201cbuild\u201d code?<\/b><\/p>\n

The code you typed into Visual Basic Express in Lesson 1 was a set of human-readable instructions (source<\/i>
code) that needed to be converted into code that could be understood
and executed by the computer. The \u201cbuild\u201d you performed did just that:
it packaged up the resulting executable code into a DLL<\/i> (Dynamic-Link Library) that can be loaded into AutoCAD.<\/p>\n

The
following screenshot shows the output in DLL form along with the
associated program debug database (which provides additional information
when troubleshooting the DLL) that you built using Visual Basic Express
in Lesson 1. The path to where the DLL gets compiled is specified in
the Visual Basic Express project settings and is set, by default, to the
binRelease or binDebug sub-folder of the Visual Basic Express project
folder (depending if you\u2019re building a Release or Debug version of your
DLL \u2013 we\u2019ll talk about that later).<\/p>\n

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Choosing a Programming Language and Development Tool<\/p>\n

Just
as humans use different languages to communicate, you have various
language options available to you when creating an AutoCAD plug-in:  for
the purposes of this guide we have chosen Visual Basic .NET, a strong
general-purpose programming language. Visual Basic .NET is particularly
popular with people learning to program, because the language syntax is
more easily readable than many other languages (such as C# or C++). <\/p>\n

There
are a number of tools available for developing Visual Basic .NET code.
They range from open source tools such as SharpDevelop and MonoDevelop
to Microsoft\u2019s flagship, professional development environment, Visual
Studio. This tutorial assumes you\u2019re using Visual Basic Express, a free
version of Visual Studio for building Visual Basic .NET applications.<\/p>\n

Visual Basic Express is an Integrated Development Environment<\/i> (IDE) because it is composed of various tools, menus and toolbars which ease the creation and management of your code. <\/p>\n

The project system in Visual Basic Express comprises Solution <\/i>and Project<\/i> files as well as Project Items<\/i>,
the individual files belonging to projects. A solution is a container
for one or more projects. Each project can in turn be considered a
container for project items \u2013 such as source files, icons, etc. \u2013 most
of which get compiled into the resultant executable file (EXE or DLL).
Visual Basic Express provides a Solution Explorer that organizes and
displays the contents of the loaded solution in a tree-view format:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The
Visual Basic Express interface also contains a text editor and
interface designer. These are displayed in the main window depending on
the type of file being edited. The text editor is where you will enter
the Visual Basic .NET code for your AutoCAD plug-in. This editor
provides advanced features such as IntelliSense and collapsible code
sections along with the more classic text-editing features such as
bookmarks and the display of line numbers.<\/p>\n

IntelliSense<\/i>
is an extremely valuable feature of the Visual Studio family that
greatly improves programmer productivity: it automatically provides
suggestions for the code being written based on the objects available
and the letters that are being typed. You will have already seen IntelliSense <\/a>at work if you typed in the code in Lesson 1. That is one reason we suggested you didn\u2019t copy and paste. <\/p>\n

Clearly
one of the key features of Visual Basic Express is its ability to build
Visual Basic .NET code into an executable file. During the build
process, the language compiler performs various checks and analyses on
the code. One such check is to ensure the code conforms to the
syntactical rules of the Visual Basic .NET language. The compiler also
performs various other checks, such as whether a variable has been
appropriately defined or not. Detected errors are reported via the Error
List window, typically found at the bottom of the main window. If you
made a mistake typing in the code in lesson 1, you may already have seen
this when you tried to build your plug-in.<\/p>\n

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<\/div>\n
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Reviewing your use of Visual Basic Express <\/p>\n

In
this section, you will review the steps performed using Visual Basic
Express from the previous lesson. However, we will put them in the
context of what you have just learned about programming in general and
building your code. <\/p>\n

    \n
  1. In the first step, you simply launched Visual Basic Express.\n<\/li>\n
  2. You then created a new Visual Basic .NET project of type AutoCAD plug-in<\/b>. This project template was added when you installed the AutoCAD .NET Wizards.\n

    Since
    the development language used for this guide is Visual Basic .NET, you
    are working with Visual Basic Express, and therefore you see Visual Basic<\/b> under the Installed Templates<\/b> portion of the New Project<\/b> dialog. The AutoCAD plug-in template<\/b> is essentially a Class Library<\/b> template, but with some additional settings.<\/p>\n

    In
    the middle section of this dialog, you saw various types of
    applications that can be created; you select the template according to
    the type of application you wish to create.<\/p>\n

    The nam
    \ne you entered at the bottom of the dialog is used to identify the project within the solution.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  3. Your
    blank project was created, containing a few standard project references
    to core .NET components along with references to the two files that
    define the AutoCAD API (AcMgd.dll and AcDbMgd.dll). The project also
    includes two Visual Basic .NET class files (MyCommands.vb<\/b> and MyPlugin.vb<\/b> – you may have optionally deleted the MyPlugin.vb<\/i>
    file from the project because it\u2019s not needed for this tutorial). These
    files contained some simple boilerplate code. Clicking on one of those
    files in Solution Explorer displays the code it contains in the text
    editor window.\n<\/li>\n
  4. You looked at the References section of the \u2018My Project\u2019 project settings and checked that AcDbMgd.dll<\/b> and AcMgd.dll<\/b> were correctly referenced (and AcCoreMdg.dll for AutoCAD 2013 and higher).<\/li>\n
  5. Saving
    the solution created physical files representing the contents of your
    project on the computer\u2019s hard drive, allowing you to open and edit it
    at another time in the future. You closed and reopened the project to
    ensure Visual Basic Express had correctly parsed the project files.\n<\/li>\n
  6. AcMgd.dll<\/i> and AcDbMgd.dll<\/i>
    contain definitions of the AutoCAD APIs you will most commonly use in
    your plug-ins. You will always reference these two files in your AutoCAD
    plug-in projects. You will sometimes reference others too.\n