AutoCAD 2004 VBA: A Programmer's Reference [Paperback]

Joe Sutphin (Author), Apress (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1590592727 | ISBN-13: 978-1590592724 | Publication Date: December 8, 2003 | Edition: 1

AutoCAD is possibly the best-selling computer-aided design software in the world, and while not a Microsoft product, AutoCAD includes Microsoft's Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), which allows you to control your programming environment. This book will teach you to run Autodesk design tasks in the embedded VBA environment. And with VBA, you can customize everything you do in AutoCAD 2004!

 

This comprehensive guide to the AutoCAD VBA language allows you take advantage of VBA in AutoCAD 2004. So if you're new to VBA programming, you will quickly acquire a skill set to work efficiently. Power users will also benefit from this text, which serves as a fast reference to the full AutoCAD object model. The book also discusses connecting to Microsoft Office products like Excel and Word, and using the Win32 API.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Joe Sutphin's background includes more than 20 years in the machinery manufacturing industry. He has more than 14 years of computer-aided design experience with more than eight years of AutoCAD-specific experience. Joe is an Autodesk registered developer, and his work has appeared in the pages of Cadence and Cadalyst magazines. He has been programming for over 10 years, with the last five years spent focusing on Visual Basic. In 1998, he collaborated with Microsoft on a Visual Basic application case study.

Product Details

• Paperback: 752 pages
• Publisher: Apress; 1 edition (December 8, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590592727
• ISBN-13: 978-1590592724
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7 x 1.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,906,983 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excelent book written for programmers, July 18, 2004

By 

Alberto Torres "atklinger" (Mount Arlington, NJ United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: AutoCAD 2004 VBA: A Programmer's Reference (Paperback)

This is a book for everybody. The Beginner and the Pro. I come to this book after two years of working experience with AutoCAD VBA and every time when I have the opportunity to read its pages I never cease to find new good details.
The presentation is good and the macros I tried were working without problems.
The Appendix D, "AutoCAD 2000, 2002, and 2004 Object Model Cross Reference", is a good piece for the user with different releases.

Thank you, Joe for so marvelous book.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars a natural way to learn OO programming, March 1, 2005

By 

W Boudville (Terra, Sol 3) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: AutoCAD 2004 VBA: A Programmer's Reference (Paperback)

Sutphin assumes you are already proficient in the manual use of AutoCAD. He does not waste your time teaching this. Instead, he gives an advanced usage mode. Where perhaps you would like to make designs in a programmatic fashion.

There are several ways this could have been done. But Autodesk decided to enable (in a manner of speaking) an "API" that is Visual Basic for Applications. To be sure, there are programmers versed in C++, Java, C# or other languages that may well look down on this choice. But VBA is a decent programming language. Being descended from Basic, it may not have some of the notational elegance of C++, say. Still, you can express a lot of computing logic in VBA.

Most importantly, VBA enables object oriented coding. The book points out that you have two types of objects. Those you can define within VBA, as in any other OO language. Plus the very natural objects that arise in your AutoCAD design. If you study the book carefully, you can see how these two types can often be finessed seamlessly together.

Suppose your background is engineering, and not computing. So that explains your AutoCAD experience. Perhaps you've never had OO programming before. The logical mapping described here is an excellent way to learn the more abstract OO concepts, for you can relate these directly to your expertise.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars AutoCAD 2004 VBA: A Programmer's Reference, March 18, 2006

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David Wilmarth (Anchorage, AK USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: AutoCAD 2004 VBA: A Programmer's Reference (Paperback)

Our developer says this book has been a great help to him.