Project Structure Question

[Anonymous]

This has probably been asked before but I wasn't able to find much with Google.

I'm currently maintaining, fixing, and continuing an existing codebase with roughly 15 custom DLLs that contain more than 300 custom commands between them.  Is there any benefit to having multiple DLLs loaded into AutoCAD?  I know the pros and cons from the coding side but I'm wondering about how AutoCAD handles having many custom routines loaded.  Just wondering if AutoCAD would benefit by having everything in one DLL.

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

To my opinion having more DLLs to load or just one bigger don't make much difference to AutoCAD. It already load dozens of DLLs and ARX by itself, as you may have already noticed, one or ten more shouldn't break the thing, just take more time during startup.

Personally I'd prefer the multiple DLL solution, expecially if loaded on-demand. This will speed up AutoCAD startup and given the number of commands, there is a concrete possibilities that not all the DLLs would be loaded every day, using lesser memory.

Don't know what those 300 commands are about, but if those 15 DLLs are covering different needs or area of expertise, it's ulikely that a designer would use them all the very same day.

[dgorsman]

There may be benefits if multiple profiles are being used, especially with third-party applications.  A tool for schematic work would be inappropriate for 3D structural modeling, for example, so being able to control what gets loaded where would be a good idea.