Developer Center

Visual Basic for Applications

The combination of the powerful ActiveX® Automation object model in AutoCAD® and Microsoft® Visual Basic® for Applications (VBA) presents a compelling framework for customizing AutoCAD. With ActiveX Controls and other applications that host VBA (such as Microsoft® Office), there’s no limit to the objects you can work with when developing custom solutions for AutoCAD.

Use VBA to Customize Visually

Developing with VBA is simple and reduces your time to completion. Using VBA, you can:

  • Visually build a user interface by simply dragging tools from the ActiveX Toolbox that contains ActiveX Controls
  • Access extensive code examples to take advantage of the AutoCAD ActiveX object model
  • Embed and run multiple routines in a single AutoCAD drawing

VBA has the same editor and programming interface that Microsoft Office applications use, so sharing drawing information throughout your company is fast and easy. Take advantage of the fact that there are more than 3 million trained VBA programmers who can help your enterprise extend the functionality of AutoCAD.

What's New

For a complete description of the new and changed objects, as well as instructions on how to migrate your VBA projects, see the Active X and VBA Developers Guide in the AutoCAD 2010 help files.