How to Access Drawing database...

Without actually opening the drawing.
My goal is this:
Acquire a list of all paperspace layouts from a given list of drawings
without actually opening them.

With VBA we can use the "thisdrawing.layouts" property on an open drawing.
Then we can step through and acquire the names with a "For Each" statement
and the ".name" property. We can also open drawings from a list and acquire
a list of the layouts within each drawing by using the preceding in each
successive drawing.

How (short of buying and learning C++ and paying a huge developers fee to
AutoDesk and any others) can the above be done in VB or VBA without actually
opening the drawing in the Drawing Editor?

The reason for asking is that it can take a long time to open ADT, ABS, LDT,
etc. drawings in AutoCAD (the current session or a hidden one in the
background) just to perform the simple task of obtaining a list of layouts.

AutoCAD developers do the same thing when we use the design center to drag
layouts into a drawing or (similarly) when we are importing page setups from
a different drawing, but I believe that they use C++ to do it.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.


--
Gary J. Orr
CADD Administrator
(218) 279-2421


LHB, Inc
21 West Superior Street, Suite 500
Duluth, Mn 55802
(218) 727-8446
www.LHBcorp.com

 

You can do it with VBA or VB
Search for ObjectDBX in this NG and you'll find plenty of examples.

 

I had searched... my ignorance of certain assumptions caused me to stumble
early on... I did not have the correct type libraries loaded to interpret
most of what I had been reading and trying. As such everything was failing
for me and my frustration level was going through the roof.

Are there specific type libraries for VBA to give access to the DBX
functions? I currently have:
AutoCAD/ObjectDBX Common 16.0 Type Library;
AutoCAD/ObjectDBX Common 1.0 Type Library;

I found the following line in one of my searches:
AcadApplication.GetInterfaceObject("ObjectDBX.AxDbDocument")
this reference to a type library reminded me of my training...

Please excuse my ignorance as I'm a newbie to VB/VBA.

--
Gary J. Orr
CADD Administrator
(218) 279-2421


LHB, Inc
21 West Superior Street, Suite 500
Duluth, Mn 55802
(218) 727-8446
www.LHBcorp.com