Through the Interface

This post may feel like a blast from the past for any long-time readers still out there. After a break of several years, I'm once again posting about the topic this blog was founded (17 years ago!) to help people get to grips with: AutoCAD and .NET.

This is definitely a blip rather than a trend, however: I just wanted to amplify this post by my friend Madhu Moogala, which talks at a very high level about the next release of AutoCAD (2024+1) and its API technology.

Cutting to the chase, the nugget of information that interested me most is that AutoCAD will now support .NET (formerly known as .NET Core) rather than the Windows-specific .NET Framework. The Alpha versions will use .NET 6 while the engineering team is expecting to support .NET 8 with the shipping release.

In and of itself this doesn't mean much, in truth: it doesn't automagically mean that AutoCAD will support .NET on non-Windows platforms, sadly. But it does unlock the house containing the door that could be forced open to that being a possibility, which I admit to finding very exciting.