I used to program a number of small routines in VB for older versions but am seriously struggling with the .net application. I can't seem to find any good resources for where to get started other than a few short "basics" on the Autodesk website.
Is there a new Object viewer to get an idea of how this works?
Or am I better just to stick with the VB Editor and go from there.
Are there any good training resources available.
All advise is welcome! Thanks.
First order of business - forget about AutoCAD for now. Fighting on more than one front is a sure way to defeat, so first focus on the basics of your chosen dotNET language. Build a few DOS-box applications to get a handle on object-oriented programming concepts, methods, properties and Visual Studio features.
Once you've got a handle on that download the ObjectARX SDK for your AutoCAD version. This contains help files with the various objects and associated methods and properties. With a solid grounding in OOP they will make much more sense.
Finally, I'd suggest popping over a couple of boards to the one for dotNET: http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/net/bd-p/152
I agree with the other poster about becoming familiar with OOP/Visual Studio - fight one battle at a time.
For the autodesk specific parts, check out Jerry Winters' videos in AU. http://au.autodesk.com/au-online/classes-on-demand/search?full-text=vba+.net&productName=&year= provides a list of archived Autodesk University videos regarding VBA and .Net conversion. The second result, CP5785 helped me a lot moving from VBA to .net.
Hope this helps
Regards,
Tom
Sorry but I don't - my company has sent me to paid training in the past so I've never looked for free/open training.Watch the Jerry Winters material. It's how I got started but I also had 10+ years VS use beforehand.
VS is a fairly complicated program but the basics are not that much different from VBA. In a lot of cases, the existant vba code can be wrapped into VS with very little modification. The biggest thing being to get the SDK parts from Autodesk for the version of cad you're using. Code compiled for 2008 will not run in 2009, etc and Autodesk loves pulling down resources outside their current plus 2 previous policy.
-tom
To specifically answer your Object viewer question - yes there is an Object Viewer, it's called Object Browser and can be seen from the View Menu. I'm using Visual Studio 2010 so your results might vary if using 2012 or 2005.
Tom