I couldn't resist... I just had to have a play with this technology, today. 🙂
Here are the steps to get your first (very simple) F# application working inside AutoCAD.
First we need to download and install the latest F# distributable from here (at the time of writing this was the July 31 release - 1.9.2.9).
We create a base F# project, selecting the "F# Project" template:
We now add a new item to the project of type "F# Source File" to the project:
The file created contains a lot of boilerplate code that is definitely worth looking at to get a feel for the basics of the F# language.
We now go ahead and replace this with our own F# code (which I created by borrowing liberally from one of the F# samples from CodePlex... I should say - once again - that this is my very first attempt at using F#, so this was intended to be functional rather than elegant :-).
(* Use lightweight F# syntax *)
#light
(* Declare a specific namespace
and module name
*)
module MyNamespace.MyApplication
(* Import managed assemblies *)
open System
open System.Windows.Forms
open Autodesk.AutoCAD.Runtime
(* Now we declare our command *)
[<CommandMethod("Test")>]
let f () =
(* Create our form *)
let frm = new Form()
frm.Text <- "This is a WinForm"
frm.Height <- 80
frm.Width <- 360
frm.StartPosition <-
FormStartPosition.CenterScreen
(* Create the contents:
a Label
a TextBox
a Button
*)
let lb = new Label()
lb.Text <- "Enter text: "
lb.Width <- 60
lb.Left <- 10
lb.Top <- 12
let tb = new TextBox()
tb.Left <- 80
tb.Top <- 10
tb.Width <- 200
(* Define an EventHandler for
the Click event and attach
it to the Button
*)
let mb _ _ =
ignore(
MessageBox.Show(
tb.Text,
"Text typed:"
)
)
let eh = new EventHandler(mb)
let bt = new Button()
bt.Text <- "Submit"
bt.Left <- 290
bt.Top <- 8
bt.Width <- 50
bt.Click.AddHandler(eh)
(* Add the controls to our Form *)
frm.Controls.Add(lb)
frm.Controls.Add(tb)
frm.Controls.Add(bt)
(* Display the Form *)
Application.Run(frm)
To get this code to build, we have to add assembly references to AutoCAD's managed assemblies in our project settings, as well as setting the project type to "DLL":
The application should now build, creating "myfirstfsharpapp.dll". We load this in AutoCAD using the standard NETLOAD command, and then execute our TEST command:
When we enter some text and click "Submit", a message box is displayed with the string we entered:
That's it for this first attempt. In future posts I hope to solve more interesting problems with the F# language, but you do, of course, have to start somewhere.
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