The AutoCAD CAD Standards feature helps to maintain consistency in drawing files by allowing users to check the objects in the drawing files against a specified set of drawing standards (DWS) files.
Developers can extend the capabilities of the CAD Standards feature by writing plug-ins with the Autodesk Standards Manager library. Plug-ins are applications that check and compare the properties of specific types of non-graphical and graphical objects against objects of the same type in a DWS file.
The CAD Standards feature uses a collection of Windows DLLs that communicate through a set of COM interfaces. At the heart of the architecture is the use of COM DLL plug-ins to find errors, provide information about possible fixes, and apply fixes. Plug-ins check for standards compliance and provide data used by the CAD Standards feature in the AutoCAD program and the stand-alone Batch Standards Checker.
The plug-ins that ship with the AutoCAD program are used to check the following non-graphical objects: