AutoCAD Civil 3D Customization

[#1]

Incredible you learned this on your own Jeff.... your one impressive dude!

[#2]

really appreciate it Jeff... I know you must have worked hard on that...

still would like your advice on where to get after "hello world".  I have a novice understanding of visual basic itself, but not related to autocad. Should I start there?

I'd like to stick with VB... since I'm already slightly familiar with it.

Again, much appreciated!!!

[#3 · Accepted solution]

VB.NET is fine, just I prefer to use C#. That's the nice thing about .NET, you have options.

Try to work through the .NET training: http://images.autodesk.com/adsk/files/autocad_net_training0.zip This contains text and code for using both VB.NET and C#. 

Yes, .NET requires you to write more code than lisp would. But, as you've already noticed, .NET is MUCH faster to execute than lisp. See if you can work through the example I posted after using the converter to get it into VB.NET.

I'm offline for the next 8-12 hours, so good luck! Just dig in, it eventually will 'click'.  You can keep on posting where you get stuck, too. Josh is more into VB than I so he may have some other/better information for you.

[#4 · Accepted solution]

Since you are interacting with the user (getting a point and getting an entity), it would be good to go through the .Net tutorials that Jeff linked you to. The main page where the download is from is at: 

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

The .Net training zip is about halfway down the page. This will help you understand the methods available to interact with the user at the command line (through the Editor). 

To use this to get the alignment object is shown in the blog post below:

http://www.civil4d.com/2011/02/civil3d-net-getting-the-alignment-station-label-styles/

[#5]

Awesome... thanks a mill!

[#6]

for anyone watching this still, do you know any links that nicely explain good ways of structuring .net stuff?

So you might have functions that do extension methods, then ones that do pdf manipulation, some that do graphics and so on.

I basically use one namespace for all helper functions, and separate into projects and .cs files as it makes sense.

Essentially, its all on root folders with same namespace.

Do you guys separate into folders and use more detailes sub-namespaces?

Do you separate based on what referenced (dependencies) are needed?

Do you separate on items you can share, as opposed to proprietary ones?

I think half of any language is building on past stuff, and even beginners need things like extension methods set up.

Lookin for ideas.....