External Access to AutoCAD

[Anonymous]

I have seen a lot of documentation talking about utilizing netload in order to access c# DLL's to control and manipulate AutoCAD and its files.

I am curious though if there is good documentation out there highlighting a way to externally access an AutoCAD file.  I want to be able to launch my C# app, point to an AutoCAD file, and then perform an action such as jpegOUT all blocks.

Thank you in advance for any help or tips you can provide!

[Anonymous]

You're going to have to use COM library to do such processing, that is if you want to use autocad at all.

[Anonymous]

Sorry to seem dense but... using the com object I can bypass the necessity to have my code loaded into AutoCAD via the netload command?

I haven't had much success with that so I just want to ensure my efforts aren't futile.

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

Yea, so if you want to execute your application from within AutoCad, and you want it using .net library, then you use netload and execute it from a command line. But if you want it executed from outside of autocad, then you use AutoCad's COM library. So you have your own EXE program, from which you add the ACAD's COM library, and you can do what you want with the files then. You still have to have AutoCad installed though. There are other ways to do it without AutoCad, but that's a different story.