Through the Interface

Oh, OK. I think I got it. I am using ObjectARX 2007, in which it's not Editor but Application. So I am supposed to use Application.Show... Thanks, I didn't know that.

My experience with the Application.ShowDialog or Application.Show ist that it works fine with a parent or main form. However, if I have child forms that spawn after a button click, then the Application.ShowDialog functions are not reliable. Unfortunately, I don't have a specific example to submit to you or DevHelp to show you what I mean. But the long and short of it is that I use the Application.Show functions for generating the parent form, and then I use the forms built-in / inherited method of .Show for the child dialogs.

"2. Dialog size and position will be persisted automatically"

This probably not .NET API issue, but the automatic persisting could be a problem, when you sometimes have to connect your computer to different number of monitor. Say, if you use your laptop in office with 2 screens, you place one of your .NET API dialog box (modal!) on second screen and close it there. Then you carry your laptop to a presentation with a projector (only one screen), start AutoCAD, run your commend to show the dialog box. Now your AutoCAD would appear frozen without reason. You can only kill the Acad process from task manager. That is because the dialog box is shown somewhere outside the screen (the persisted position on second screen). I was embarrassed when running into this in the exactly situation, and I could not show anything in that presentation until I came back to my desk, connected back to my second screen, dragged the dialog box back to primary screen and close it from the primary screen.

So, if I want to show a dialog box, and the first 3 reasons you listed are not important to me (1. I'd like my own icon; 2. I do not want Acad remember dialog box location, it should always on primary screen, and 3. Since it is dialog box, one cannot access other Acad window anyway), what other unexpected behaviors would be if I simply use System.Windows.Forms.Form.ShowDialog()?

Of course, if Acad is clever enough to detect if the persisted location is valid in available screen(s), if not, show dialog box in primary screen, then the reason 2 would be a benefit as you say.

Yes - Tony's point is likely to be a concern for modeless dialogs not displayed using ShowModelessDialog().

Around the dialog display issue: one option, in lieu of AutoCAD checking the bounds of a dialog before display, would be for you to manipulate (or simply remove) the location information stored for the dialog:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Autodesk\AutoCAD\R17.2\ACAD-7001:409\Profiles\AutoCAD\Dialogs\MyApplication.MyForm

Regards,

Kean

Hi,
Sorry for the previous mail. Wrongly activated the post button.

I have a doubt regarding modal dialogs. Is there any possibility to detect whether any modal dialog is opened on current autocad application. If so, is there any possibility to close those modal dialogs programmatically?

Thanks and Regards,
Vignesh. S

Hi Kean,
I have a similar exception to that Posted by: Jon Szewczak | August 08, 2008 at 01:40 PM, above.
He did not specify, but my issue is with a Modeless dialog that I display as a child to several different Modal Parent forms. All of my other forms work fine with Application.ShowModal/ShowModelessDialog, but this particular form comes up correctly the first time it is shown, then the second time it is shown, all of the controls on the form are visible, but disabled. Then from that point on, every time you show the form all of the controls are invisible. I switched just that one call to the normal form.show and it works again. This is a repeatable problem, but it is a fairly large project for submitting to someone (I have also not yet convinced my company to spring for ADN). I could probably strip a bunch of unrelated stuff out, and attempt to simplify the project while maintaining the unusual behavior, if you want.

Based on part of your comment, I was unclear in that there is only one modal parent form each time this modeless dialog might be displayed, but there are multiple modal forms that are potential parents for this form.

The idea is that this form contains options which apply to several different types of objects (physical objects, not programming) and each of those different types of objects has its own placement form.

Rather than recreate the same set of controls on several forms(or make a user control to replicate), I decided to make a seperate form, and I chose to make it modeless so that if the user hits the 'more >>' button, it shows the additional options form, but the user can still pick controls on both the parent form and the child. Essentially these choices were made to try and accommodate a request from my user group.

hi,

i have a c# application in which i am opening a dwg file and after that i am showing a modal dialog. My problem is the modal dialog only displaying and dwg file is not opening. Is it because of the modal dialog? If i close the modal dialog, then it will suddenly display the dwg file. what could be the reason?

Hi Kean, I've a little problem when I use the modeless dialog to show a form, maybe is something basic, but I'm not a programer, and I've not found the solution anywhere.

When I use a form in modelessdialog to draw something on autocad, then, I cannot save the document.

The commandline shows:
The drawing "Dibujo2.dwg" have a command in execution.

I do not know how can I finish that command. Please, can you help me?

thanks,

Sorry for commenting on another old blog post, but i have a quick question.

I've migrated all of my code to use ShowModalDialog from window's ShowDialog to take advantage of the points listed in this blog post.

I was wondering if there is any way to override inheriting AutoCAD's icon?

We've used our own window icon for our product for quite awhile now and i would like to continue that with the migration to VB.net.

Thanks!