Recommendation for Autocad programming approach

[Anonymous]

Hi, I'm an experienced C# programmer but have no experience in Autocad. I'm assigned a job to develop a C# program to automate 2D drawing on mechanical parts on Autocad 2010.

I've downloaded the ObjectArx SDK and went through a simple tutorial using the NETLOAD to get the program to run in Autocad.

Also, as I'm not familiar with Autocad, I thought I might need to understand how the 2D drawing is done. -> what are the properties or how the entities/objects relate to each other. I might need to use vector or trigonemetry to draw based on some inputs. Is there anyone who is experienced in this area who can give some advice on how I should approach this?

I'm gone through tutorials online that show how a designer use Autocad, but are there any resource that gives a programmer point of view? The closest book that I found is VB.Net for Autocad 2010 -> is this good? Are there any C# books or other books that I should look at?

 I'm a little overwhelmed 🙂

Thanks!

[michael_robertson · Accepted solution]

If you are drawing things, geometry is definitely going to come into play in a big way. Almost everything will be based off of points (where lines start/stop, center of arcs, etc).

The best advice I can give you is to sit down with a Cad Technician or Engineer that currently does this process manually and get a feel for what they are doing, then abstract it out so you can automate it.

The blog http://through-the-interface.typepad.com/through_the_interface/ by Kean Walmsley is a good reference as it this Discussion Group.

The VB.Net for Autocad 2010 is a pretty good book to get the basic ideas and processes covered (and easy enough to convert to C#).

[Hallex]

Take a look at this page as well

http://docs.autodesk.com/ACD/2010/ENU/AutoCAD%20.NET%20Developer's%20Guide/index.html?url=WS1a919382...

~'J'~

[Anonymous]

Thanks, Michael and Hallex for the suggestions.

I will look into the online documentation as well.

Cheers.