CP Managing CAD Standards with VB.NET Lee Ambrosius – Autodesk, Inc. Sr. Technical Writer – AutoCAD/AutoCAD LT/ AutoCAD for Mac Image courtesy of Hobart, Yañez, Ramos, Maguey, and Martínez

Where Am I and Who Should Be Here You are in session: CP Managing CAD Standards with VB.NET You should know or have the following to get the most out of this session:  AutoCAD 2011 (or AutoCAD 2007 and later)  CAD Standards and/or the Batch Standards Checker  Visual Studio and VB.NET

Overview AutoCAD ships with a COM library that allows you to implement a custom CAD Standards plug-in.  In this session, you will:  Learn to define a plug-in  Load and use a plug-in  Explore the differences between a non-graphical and graphical plug-in

Who Am I? My name is Lee Ambrosius  AutoCAD user for over 15 years ago; started on R12 DOS  Sr. Technical Writer at Autodesk for AutoCAD/AutoCAD LT/AutoCAD for Mac  Author of AutoCAD related books and articles  AutoCAD 2009 and AutoCAD LT 2009 All-in-one Desk Reference for Dummies  AutoCAD D Modeling Workbook for Dummies  AUGI World and AUGI Hotnews  White Papers for Autodesk

Session Rules A few rules for this session:  Silent your cell phone  If you have to leave at anytime, please do so quietly  I will allow time to ask questions during the session unless we start getting behind Thanks for Your Cooperation

What is Going to be Covered  Learn What is Needed Before Getting Started  Create a Basic VB.NET Project for a Plug-in  Anatomy or Basics of a Plug-in  Load and Use a Plug-in  Look at a Graphical Plug-in  Debug a Plug-in

What You Need Before Getting Started  ObjectARX Software Development Kit (SDK)  Development Environment  Visual Studio.NET 2008  Visual Basic 2008 Express Edition  AutoCAD Managed.NET Developer’s Guide  AutoCAD ActiveX Reference Guide  Windows SDK  Only needed if using Visual Basic 2008 Express Edition

What You Need Before Getting Started After everything is installed, you need to create an Interop Assembly of the CAD Standards Type Library. 1. Display the Visual Studio 2008 Command Prompt 2. Type cd "c:\ObjectARX 2011\inc-win32" and press Enter 3. Type tlbimp acstmgr.tlb and press Enter The file AcStMgr.dll will be added to the inc-win32 folder. This only needs to be done once.

Defining a Plug-in A CAD Standard plug-in is based on the Class Library template. 1. Create a new project using the Class Library template 2. Reference the following libraries from the ObjectARX SDK:  AcStMgr.dll – CAD Standards Manager library  Axdb18enu.tlb – AutoCAD ActiveX/COM library 3. Reference the COM library Microsoft XML Type library (Microsoft XML, v6.0) – Used for reporting in the Batch Standards Checker 4. Check Make Assembly COM-Visible under Assembly Information.

Basics of a CAD Standards API The IAcStPlugin2 interface is used to implement a CAD Standard plug-in. Implemented methods and properties being in the following categories:  CAD Standard properties  Initialization  Error iterations; an error being a standards violation  Retrieve errors and fixes  Fix errors  Report errors

CAD Standard properties Each plug-in must support a standard set of properties that help to identify it from other loaded plug-ins. The properties you must support are:  Author  Description  HRef  Icon  Name  Version

Initialization The initialization of the plug-in is the very first thing that happens. A plug-in is initialized during one of the following conditions:  Opening of a drawing with an associated DWS file and the plug- in and real-time checking are enabled  Enabling a plug-in in the CAD Standards dialog box or the Batch Standards Checker The following methods must be implemented for initialization:  Initialize  SetupForAudit

Error iterations Before errors can be fixed, they must be identified and then handled one at a time. The following methods are used to identify and step through each error in a drawing against a DWS file:  SetContext  Start  Next  Done  Clear

Retrieve errors and fixes After an error has been identified, you then get the opportunity to display all possible fixes and the recommended fix. The following methods are used to get the current error being looked at, all available fixes, the recommended fix based on the current error, and display the property differences for the error and selected fix:  GetError  GetAllFixes  GetRecommendedFix  GetPropertyDiffs

Fix errors Once the user has determined the appropriate fix or an automatic fix can be applied, the FixError method is called. The revised properties need to be assigned to the bad (error) object and the error object needs to be updated corrrectly if the fix was applied.

Report errors Most reporting is handled by the CAD Standards framework or the Batch Standards Checker. However, you need to call the WritePluginInfo method to populate the information about your plug-in for the Batch Standards Checker report. There is also something else what seems to be a limitation of the API. You need to handle writing out the information about the standards you are using to check against the drawing for you plug-in.

Other Methods to Implement You need to implement the following even though they are not used:  CheckSysvar  StampDatabase

Load and Use a Plug-in After the plug-in has been created and built, you still have some work to do to get AutoCAD to load it. The Plug-in needs to be registered with:  Windows – Using RegAsm.exe  AutoCAD – Using a Registry key

Load and Use a Plug-in Once loaded, you should test your plug-in under the following situations:  CAD Standards checking in AutoCAD  Automatic fixes when checking standards in AutoCAD  Real-time checking in AutoCAD, notifications  Batch Standards Checker

Create a Graphical Plug-in Fundamentally there is no difference between a non-graphical and graphical CAD Standard plug-in other than how you validate an error and available fixes. The following needs to be changed for each plug-in if starting from the samples:  Change the helper classes StandardsHelp.vb  Class name, ProgId, a few of the global variables  Description() and Name() properties  GetObjectFilter() and SetupForAudit() methods  PlugIn_Next() and PlugIn_Clear() methods  GetAllFixes()and GetRecommendedFix() methods  FixError() method and WriteStandardsItemsInfo() methods

Debugging a Plug-in A plug-in can be debugged if you are using Visual Studio (VS) 2008, not Visual Basic 2008 Express. Do the following to debug a plug-in in AutoCAD: 1. Add a reference path to the inc-win32 folder in the ObjectARX SDK. 2. Specify the location of AutoCAD so it is started when debugging begins. Add your breakpoints to the code in VS Register the debug version of the DLL built and the plug-in with AutoCAD through the Registry. 4. Add a DWS file to the drawing to be checked and enable the plug-in for checking. Start checking the drawing file.

Final Questions Questions Going Once… Going Twice…

Closing Remarks Thanks for choosing this session, and do not forget to fill out the evaluation. If you have any further questions, I will be around for the week and can be reached at: twitter: Enjoy the rest of the conference.

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