Get Attributes Without Opening Drawing Files

[CADdancer]

Good Afternoon AUGI Members:

I am relatively new to VBA programming and I do not know if this question was already posted, so I apologize in advance if it has been asked before.

I would like to have a VBA routine allow the user the ability to select a directory of AutoCAD drawing files (batch) and extract known attributes from these files and then write this information into an Excel spread sheet. From what I have read so far it appears that this can be accomplished but I do not know where to start or how to begin. If someone can point me in the right direction and or provide some simple examples for me to get started I can attempt to develop this routine.

I would appreciate any assistance with this effort.

Regards,
Vince

[RobertB]

Vince,

The mechanism you are looking for the the ObjectDBX interface. It permits access to drawings without opening them visibly in the editor. (So they open much faster.)

'Requires reference to AutoCAD/ObjectDBX Common Type Library
Option Explicit

Sub Test()
  Dim oDBX As AxDbDocument
  Set oDBX = New AxDbDocument
  oDBX.Open "C:\Temp\Test.dwg"
  MsgBox "First layer name is " & oDBX.Layers.Item(0).Name
  Set oDBX = Nothing
End Sub

[Ed Jobe]

As for the other parts, connecting to other programs like xl is called ActiveX automation. If you installed the samples with acad, there is one on extracting atts to xl.