app.config in a .NET project will become
[appName].exe.config after compiling. Acad .NET API DLL by itself is not a EXE
application, it is part of AutoCAD application (acad.exe). That is why Acad
comes with acad.exe.config file since Acad2005 (in AutoCAD installation folder).
You should place configurations for your .NET API code into
acad.exe.config.
For example, in our office, almost all .NET API
apps for Acad need to access our enterprise database, so we let AutoCAD know
which database to connect to when a .NET API app is loaded by:
1. Add <appSettings> key in the
axcad.exe.config file:
<configuration>
<startup>
<!--We always use the latest version of the framework
installed on the computer. If you
are having problems then explicitly specify .NET 2.0 by
uncommenting the following line.
<supportedRuntime
version="v2.0.50727"/>
-->
</startup>
<appSettings>
size=2>
<add key="DatabaseServer"
value="ServerName"/>
<add key="Database" value="DatabaseName"/>
...
</appSettings>
...
...
</configuration>
2. In the .NET API class:
public class MyStartupAddin :
Autodesk.AutoCAD.Runtime.IExtensionApplication
{
private static string
mConnectionString;
...
public void
Initialize()
{
string server
=
System.Configuration.ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["DatabaseServer"];
string database =
System.Configuration.ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["Database"];
//Compose the
ConnectionString
mConnectionString=.......
}
}
Of course you can place as many as your app's
settings here. However, with all said, if you have a lots of .NET API apps in
Acad, you may not want to use acad.exe.config to store app settings. That would
make acad.exe.config very messy, not to mention possible update issue because of
it being located in every CAD computer.
I'd recommend only store key settings that rarely
changes in acad.exe.config. You may need to create your own configuration
storage mechnism that suit your need, considering the management/deployment
requirement. In my case, I only store the database identification
information. All other .NET API apps' settings are stored in database. So, as
long as Acad starts and reads the acad.exe.config for database location, it will
be able to get all other needed settings from our database, and all those
settings can be easily managed in a central location (database), without issue
of being out-dated.
For some configurations you may not have other
options than let them stay in acad.exe.config, such as configuration needed to
WCF/WWF, should your .NET code uses these technology.
style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
I'm
having trouble with making configuration sections in the app.config file to
work with Autocad. If I change the project output type to a windows
application and have a button call some code, the section handler works just
fine and returns the expected object, but apparently calling that same code
from within an Autocad command in a class library dll doesn't work, it returns
nothing. Any ideas on why this is happening? Does Autocad blocks the use of
the System.Configuration assembly somehow? I found this other post from
several years ago:
http://discussion.autodesk.com/forums/thread.jspa?messageID=5128820? in which
the guy apparently has the same problem and wasn't solved. Hopefully I'll have
better luck having passed more than 3 years from that. Thank
you.
