About VBA and ActiveX Compatibility

The latest release continues to support the VBA development environment, but you need to download and install the runtime and development environment separately.

If you use the AutoCAD ActiveX API in an application that supports VBA, such as Microsoft Word or Excel, or as part of a Managed .NET or ObjectARX application, you might need to update the existing references to the new COM libraries.

The following lists the library files used by the ActiveX API in previous releases, and the new library files used in the latest release:

Note: <language> represents the language of the Object Library that is being referenced. For example, <language> might be enu on English installations and fra on French installations.

In addition to updating COM library references, projects created for AutoCAD 2013-based products and earlier might need to be updated to support VBA 64-bit in AutoCAD 2014-based products and later.

For a general history of the changes made to the ActiveX API, see “Introduction > ActiveX API History“ in the ActiveX Developer’s Guide (<drive>:\Program Files\Common Files\Autodesk Shared\acad_aag.chm).

Note: Starting with AutoCAD 2014-based products, custom applications must work under secure mode; when the SECURELOAD system variable is set to 1 or 2. When operating under secure mode, the AutoCAD-based product is restricted to loading and executing files that contain code from trusted locations; trusted locations are specified by the TRUSTEDPATHS system variable. For more information, see About Protecting Against Malicious Code.