Automation projects created with the VBA IDE in AutoCAD 2014 or earlier, or stand-alone applications created with Visual Basic .NET will need to be updated to work with the latest AutoCAD release.
AutoCAD automation projects use the type libraries
- acax<release><language>.tlb
- cao16<language>.tlb - AutoCAD 2014 and earlier
- cao20<language>.tlb - AutoCAD 2015 and later
AutoCAD automation projects use the AutoCAD.Application ProgID for the CreateObject, GetObject, and GetInterfaceObject methods. For example, if you are using the CreateObject function in an AutoCAD automation project, you can use CreateObject("AutoCAD.Application") to start the most recently launched AutoCAD release on the workstation.
An automation project can start a specific release of the product, by specifying the major and/or a minor release number as part of the ProgID. For example, the ProgID
- "AutoCAD.Application.25.0" starts AutoCAD 2025
- "AutoCAD.Application.25" starts AutoCAD 2025
- "AutoCAD.Application.24.3" starts AutoCAD 2024
- "AutoCAD.Application.24.2" starts AutoCAD 2023
- "AutoCAD.Application.24.1" starts AutoCAD 2022
- "AutoCAD.Application.24.0" starts AutoCAD 2021
- "AutoCAD.Application.24" starts AutoCAD 2021, AutoCAD 2022, AutoCAD 2023, or AutoCAD 2024
- "AutoCAD.Application.23.1" starts AutoCAD 2020
- "AutoCAD.Application.23.0" starts AutoCAD 2019
- "AutoCAD.Application.23" starts AutoCAD 2019 or AutoCAD 2020
- "AutoCAD.Application.22" starts AutoCAD 2018
- "AutoCAD.Application.21" starts AutoCAD 2017
- "AutoCAD.Application.20.1" starts AutoCAD 2016
- "AutoCAD.Application.20.0" starts AutoCAD 2015
- "AutoCAD.Application.20" starts AutoCAD 2015 or AutoCAD 2016
- "AutoCAD.Application.19.1" starts AutoCAD 2014
- "AutoCAD.Application.19.0" starts AutoCAD 2013
- "AutoCAD.Application.19" starts AutoCAD 2013 or AutoCAD 2014