A better VBA editor for Autocad

Question

I'm developing some VBA macros in Autocad. The built-in editor is obsolete, but I wasn't able to find any better way to edit the .dvb files.

A .dvb file does contains many other source files packed in, and so far I think that Autocad is the only software that can unpack them...

The only way it seems to be able to do this, is to export every file from the .dvb manually; but since I have about 30 files there, it doesn't seem like this is a good way to do things.

Any ideas on how to do this better?

This may help - https://stackoverflow.com/questions/60713100/autocad-net-project-using-visual-studio-code — user10186832, Dec 23 '22 at 15:59

score 7 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 21 '11 at 07:39

You can export all your files with this code :

Public Sub Export()
    Dim vbe As vbe
    Set vbe = ThisDrawing.Application.vbe
    Dim comp As VBComponent
    Dim outDir As String
    outDir = "C:\\Temp\\VbaOutput"
    If Dir(outDir, vbDirectory) = "" Then
        MkDir outDir
    End If
    For Each comp In vbe.ActiveVBProject.VBComponents
        Select Case comp.Type
            Case vbext_ct_StdModule
                comp.Export outDir & "\" & comp.Name & ".bas"
            Case vbext_ct_Document, vbext_ct_ClassModule
                comp.Export outDir & "\" & comp.Name & ".cls"
            Case vbext_ct_MSForm
                comp.Export outDir & "\" & comp.Name & ".frm"
            Case Else
                comp.Export outDir & "\" & comp.Name
        End Select
    Next comp

     MsgBox "VBA files were exported to : " & outDir
End Sub

I did something like that a while ago to merge the files edited from different developers working on the same DVB. I developed a VBA plugin to automate this task and do a complete export to a defined path. Those were hard times. Fortunately we switched to .NET now. — WizzardsApprentice, Mar 23 '11 at 15:57

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered May 24 '12 at 01:47

If you don't feel like modifying your code with the above Export() subroutine, you can export your VBA code from the .dvb file using the VBA2VB Form Converter macro written by Leslie Lowe, or the modified version written by Augusto Gonçalves of the Autodesk Developer Network. This macro has the added bonus of being able to convert simple VBA forms to VB6 forms. You'll need to do this if you want to be able to port the project to .NET in the future, as AutoCAD is dropping VBA support. The modified version of the macro is especially nice, as it will create the .vbproj ASCII file that you'll need to do the migration, which you'd otherwise need a copy of the old Visual Basic 6 IDE to make.

FWIW, A .dvb file can be opened using an archive utility like 7-Zip, if you want to see what's in it -- but it appears to be compiled, and isn't helpful if you want human-readable or exportable code.

I could not find the modified version, but the first one is still available — orellabac, Dec 19 '17 at 18:29

A better VBA editor for Autocad

2 Answers2