AutoCAD .NET application and WCF

[aligili]

I tried to creat a 64bit autocad .net app which tries to communicate with a 32 bit application in a separate process. So I am using WCF to manage the communication between apps. The service host is the .net dll loaded inside autocad and the client is the other .net app(32bit). It seems that the client can not communicate with the server.

Can anyone guide me to figure out how WCF can be used inside autocad .net app? or may be any example could be useful.

Thanks,

Ali

[khoa.ho · Accepted solution]

WCF is the web service (since .Net framework 3.0) that exposes service reference links (urls) to the outside world. Those urls can be consumed by any apps (Windows Forms, web apps, AutoCAD plug-ins...). So WCF is used outside AutoCAD .NET or AutoCAD uses WCF inside its .NET code.

The idea to use WCF inside AutoCAD can be implemented by my two suggested solutions:

1. Make AutoCAD .NET to expose service reference links like WCF. So the server should have an AutoCAD opened to accept TCP binding connections from many clients by urls. AutoCAD is single threaded app so it will face the issue of concurrency.

2. WCF will connect to AutoCAD by sending commands using COM interface. So the server will have WCF app and an opened AutoCAD to work together.

Paul Schleppy had a good lesson for Service-Oriented AutoCAD with WCF at AU 2010. You can give it a try.

I am working on WCF with RealDWG and it is more convenient to run AutoCAD .NET code without an open AutoCAD instance on the server. RealDWG is AutoCAD without GUI, just only DLL libraries like any other third party .NET libraries to use in WCF.

-Khoa