Hi all,
I'm looking for a .net library that will enable me to extract block attributes out of a autocad file. I don't mind paying for a developers licence but I should be able to freely redistribute the library itself without additional costs. Is there a lib that suits my needs?
greetings,
Coen
Try the Open Design Alliance or trawl through the AutoCAD forums. This Blog is also a good reference. You could try the AutoDesk Developer Network but you will need to sell a kidney.
Look at the ADN (Autodesk Developer Network), www.autodesk.com/adn. I was a member for a few years and the price ranges from $400 - a few thousand depending on your level and number of developers. I found it to be valuable when I was developing exclusively for the engineering community.
If your customers have AutoCAD, there is no need to license anything from Autodesk for distribution. You would, however, need a license for the development and testing work. The ADN license would permit this usage but ADN is a recurring, annual fee. You'l need to crunch the numbers to see if you're better off purchasing an off-the-shelf commercial license or going the ADN route.
AutoCAD has .NET apis that give access to a bunch of stuff, including blocks. There is also the old COM apis.
You didn't mention which version of AutoCAD. The last several releases have made significant strides to improve and expand the .NET apis.
The other option is to use RealDWG. If your customers will not have AutoCAD but they have AutoCAD files they must access via your app, you will need a library to read/write the dwg file. RealDWG is $5000 the first year, $2500 each year after. Distribution rights are one year so you must keep paying the annual fees if you want to keep distributing.
There are alternatives to RealDWG. I am vaguely familair with one such library offered by an open file format organization but, IMO, that raises some questions about reverse engineering the file format. Autodesk tends to be very litiguous and I prefer to stay out of court when possible.
Good luck,