Walkthrough: Hello World

Create a New Project

The first step in writing a C# program with Visual Studio is to choose a project type and create a new Class Library.

1. From the File menu, select New Project…
2. In the Installed Templates frame, click Visual C#\Windows Desktop.
3. In the right-hand frame, click Class Library (see Figure 1: Add New Project ). This walkthrough assumes that the project location is: C:\Samples.
4. In the Name field, type HelloWorld as the project name.
5. Verify that the selected .NET is ".NET 8".
6. Click OK.
7. Once the project is created, navigate to the project in the Solution Explorer Properties Build
8. In the Build dialog, select All Configurations from the Configurations drop-down list and change the Platform Target to x64 (see Figure 2: Platform Target).

Figure 1: Add New Project

Figure 2: Platform Target

Add References

A number of components make up the Advance Steel API. They are installed with Advance Steel and can be found in subdirectories of Advance Steel 2025 installation folder. The Advance Steel 2025 installation folder is stored in the 'BinPath' value of the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Autodesk\AutoCAD\R23.1\ACAD-3026 registry key. You need to add references to the following components in order to compile the project.

To add references to the required components, follow these steps:

1. If the Solution Explorer window is not open, select Solution Explorer from the View menu.
2. In the Solution Explorer, right-click References to display a context menu.
3. From the context menu, click Add Reference. The Reference Manager window appears.
4. In the Reference Manager window, click the Browse button. A window to select files appears.
5. Browse to the Advance Steel 2025 installation folder.
6. Click the Add button to select the dll and close the window.
7. The selected dll should now be listed in the Reference Manager with a checkmark next to it.
8. Repeat steps 4-8 until all components in the table above are added. Note that when selecting dlls to add, multiple dlls may be selected at one time.
9. In the Reference Manager, click OK to close the window.
10. The selected components will now appear in the Solution Explorer under the References folder.
11. Select the newly added references and change their Copy Local property to False.
    

    Figure 3: Set Copy Local to False for Advance Steel References

Add Code

There are three main steps to adding code to an Advance Steel Addon:

• Implement the IExtensionApplication interface
• Create your command class
• Edit the AssemblyInfo.cs file

Implement IExtensionApplication

A default class called Class1 should have been created with the new project.

1. Right-click on Class1.cs in the Solution Explorer and select Rename from the context menu.
2. Rename the file Plugin.cs (and select 'Yes' when Visual Studio prompts you to perform a renaming in your project of all references to the code element 'Class1') .
3. Replace the text in Plugin.cs with the sample code below.

Code Region: Implement IExtensionApplication

using Autodesk.AdvanceSteel.Runtime; namespace HelloWorld { public sealed class Plugin : IExtensionApplication { void IExtensionApplication.Initialize() { } void IExtensionApplication.Terminate() { } } }

Tip: The Visual Studio Intellisense feature can create a skeleton implementation of an interface for you, adding stubs for all the required methods. When creating a class that implements IExtensionApplication as in the example above, you can right-click on the IExtensionApplication text and select Implement Interface Implement Interface from the Intellisense menu to have code added for the IExtensionApplication methods Initialize() and Terminate().

Figure 4: Use Intellisense to implement the interface

using Autodesk.AdvanceSteel.CADAccess;
using Autodesk.AdvanceSteel.DocumentManagement;
using Autodesk.AdvanceSteel.Runtime;
using System.Windows.Forms;

namespace HelloWorld
{
    public class TestClass
    {
        [CommandMethodAttribute("TEST_GROUP", "HelloWorld", "HelloWorld", CommandFlags.Modal)]
        public void SayHelloWorld()
        {
            MessageBox.Show("Hello World!");
        }
    }
}

using Autodesk.AdvanceSteel.Runtime;
using System.Reflection;
using System.Runtime.CompilerServices;
using System.Runtime.InteropServices;

// General Information about an assembly is controlled through the following 
// set of attributes. Change these attribute values to modify the information
// associated with an assembly.
[assembly: AssemblyTitle("HelloWorld")]
[assembly: AssemblyDescription("")]
[assembly: AssemblyConfiguration("")]
[assembly: AssemblyCompany("")]
[assembly: AssemblyProduct("HelloWorld")]
[assembly: AssemblyCopyright("Copyright ©  2015")]
[assembly: AssemblyTrademark("")]
[assembly: AssemblyCulture("")]
[assembly: ExtensionApplicationAttribute(typeof(HelloWorld.Plugin))]
[assembly: CommandClassAttribute(typeof(HelloWorld.TestClass))]

// Setting ComVisible to false makes the types in this assembly not visible 
// to COM components.  If you need to access a type in this assembly from 
// COM, set the ComVisible attribute to true on that type.
[assembly: ComVisible(false)]

// The following GUID is for the ID of the typelib if this project is exposed to COM
[assembly: Guid("85900596-22ee-4873-bbd6-7f970d32b5af")]

// Version information for an assembly consists of the following four values:
//
//      Major Version
//      Minor Version 
//      Build Number
//      Revision
//
// You can specify all the values or you can default the Build and Revision Numbers 
// by using the '*' as shown below:
// [assembly: AssemblyVersion("1.0.*")]
[assembly: AssemblyVersion("1.0.0.0")]
[assembly: AssemblyFileVersion("1.0.0.0")]

Register the Addon

Third party addons will be loaded according to information read from a configuration xml, which should be placed in the Addons folder: The Addons folder has to be a direct subfolder of the Advance Steel install folder. If the Addons folder is not there it should be created. A sample configuration xml can be found below (see MyAddons.xml):

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<AddonsData xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
<Addons>
	<Addon>
		<Name>HelloWorld</Name>
		<FullPath>C:\Samples\HelloWorld\HelloWorld\Bin\Debug\HelloWorld.dll</FullPath>
	</Addon>
	<Addon>
		<Name>MyAddon1</Name>
		<FullPath>C:Samples\MyAddon1.dll</FullPath>
	</Addon>
	<Addon>
		<Name>MyAddon2</Name>
		<FullPath>C:Samples\MyAddon1.dll</FullPath>
	</Addon>
</Addons>
</AddonsData>

This only needs to be done once per addon .dll. Any new commands added to the assembly designated by the " CommandMethodAttribute" attribute will be automatically recognized as a separate command that can be run when Advance Steel is loaded.

Run the Addon

To run the addon command, start Advance Steel. Then simply type in the name of the command, in this case, HelloWorld, and hit enter.

If you need to debug your addon, you can follow these steps:

1. Start Advance Steel.
2. In Visual Studio, put a breakpoint where you would like to stop the code in your command.
3. From the Debug menu, select Attach to Process...
4. Select the acad.exe process.
5. Run your command in Advance Steel and your breakpoint will be triggered in Visual Studio.