What Is VBA?
Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications is the edition of Visual Basic designed specifically to provide rich development capabilities inside an off-the-shelf application. Visual Basic for Applications provides all the development tools required to build solutions that incorporate application customization to solution integration. Developers can take advantage of their training in and knowledge of Visual Basic to fully customize, extend and integrate applications with Visual Basic for Applications.
Overall, users will benefit the most from improved solution quality and customized functionality as the applications they use today incorporate richer functionality and integration and are tailored to meet their needs.
How Does CAiCE Use Microsoft VBA?
CAiCE has teamed up with Microsoft Corporation to bring you CAiCE Visual GML – a product that has revolutionized civil engineering automation. Visual GML incorporates Microsoft’s Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) as CAiCE’s macro development language. VBA is included with all CAiCE products, and offers a high-level development environment for customizing and enhancing CAiCE. Visual GML uses the complete Microsoft VBA development environment, which includes the Visual Basic Library, source code debugger, object browser, and on-line help. Visual GML also includes a CAiCE object library that provides complete read and write access to the CAiCE database and graphics system.
An important feature of roadway design software is the ability to draw and generate roadway cross-sections. This involves automatic generation of cross-sectional profiles based on existing terrain. CAiCE uses fragments — VBA-generated programs — to create these profiles. These fragments allow the drawn cross-sectional profiles the intelligence to adjust according to the terrain.
- Gives you the opportunity to develop macros that perform design tasks, and to write VBA programs that communicate with Microsoft Office applications.
- You can write out customizable reports to Word document files, thereby using the formatting features provided by Office applications.
- You can write code to store and retrieve information from Access using an ODBC-compliant intelligent database.
- Organizations, such as the State Departments of Transportation are able to develop customized macros for specialized tasks, thus maintaining the integrity of the basic program and providing quick turnaround times.
What Can VBA Do For You?
VBA has opened up a new world of capabilities for the CAiCE family of products. Let’s look at just a few of the possibilities:
Customized Reports
How often have you asked your vendor for some kind of customized report, only to have to wait until they can fit it into their development schedule? Visual GML makes it easy to write your own report generators. And these reports do not have to be flat ASCII files. With VBA you can develop customized links between CAiCE and other Windows applications such as Word, Access, Excel, and ArcView. Slope stake reports, geometric descriptions, construction reports, volume tabulations, legal descriptions and other printed output can be written directly to Word document files with customized formatting. Quantity takeoffs can be written to Excel spreadsheets to produce cost estimates.
Data Editing
Could you improve your productivity with database editors designed specifically for the way you operate? The VBA links to Excel and Access can provide customized data editing utilities for specific applications. For example, CAiCE 7.0 includes a sophisticated survey data editor created by linking CAiCE with Microsoft Access. Such utilities can include customized dialog boxes and input forms, and the actual transfer of data between applications can be completely transparent to the end user.
Coordinate Geometry Computations
Do you have complicated geometric situations that occur over and over in your projects? With Visual GML you can build your own customized COGO commands to completely automate geometric problem solving. Complex problems such as ramp geometry, intersection details, interchanges, and utility placement can be reduced to a simple, customized user input form. The CAiCE VBA object library includes a complete set of useful and sophisticated geometric calculation utilities. Visual GML also gives you full access to the CAiCE project database for reading existing elements and storing new ones.
Data Import and Export
Have you ever had a job held up because you couldn’t get information from one program to another? The combination of the Visual Basic programming language and the CAiCE object library make Visual GML the ideal tool for building utility macros for importing and exporting data. Raw and reduced survey data, geometric information, DTM data, cross sections and many other types of data can be imported from just about any source. Data can also be extracted from the CAiCE database to export to other systems. These utilities are not limited to ASCII formats; VBA can read and write complex binary files and can also link directly with other VBA compliant software systems.
Graphics Output
Alignment annotations, profile labeling, superelevation diagrams, cross sections sheets, fonts, symbols, linestyles – every organization has their own way of producing drawings. Visual GML makes it possible to customize graphics output to precisely meet your plans production standards. Customized dialog boxes can be used to provide input and options where necessary. Drawing generation can be automated to such a high degree that your users can concentrate almost entirely on engineering design and modeling instead of drafting.
Roadway Design
CAiCE Visual Roads’ macro-based fragment technology has set the standard for giving you the ultimate in flexibility for roadway design. The Visual Basic programming language takes the power of fragments to an entirely new level. Fragments, which represent cross section design components such as lanes, medians, shoulders, ditches, berms, slopes, and curbs, can be totally customized to meet your design standards. They can include complex and intelligent decisions to ensure that all design considerations are covered.
Reports, data editing, graphical output, roadway design, importing and exporting – Visual GML addresses all of those aspects of engineering automation that need to be customized for your particular needs. With Visual GML, the power and functionality of CAiCE macros is virtually unlimited.