This course is intended for engineers with prior experience in physical design (e.g., mechanical or electrical systems) or structural engineering, and who have some familiarity with computer aided design and programming. The course focuses on using Visual Basic in engineering applications, and linkages to AutoCAD and Excel for an integrated computerized engineering environment.

Learn to use Visual Basic to access the properties and methods of AutoCAD entities and Excel spreadsheets in order exchange and integrate data in powerful design database. Visual Basic routines will be written to draw AutoCAD entities from spreadsheet data or to update spreadsheet when AutoCAD entities are drawn or modified. The class starts with an introduction to Visual Basic and the concept of event-driven programming. Students learn to use the Object Oriented features of Visual Basic to create simple classes of objects with properties and methods linked to the properties and methods of AutoCAD entities (lines, circles, solids, etc.). These Objects can then create bi-directional links to the values of cells in Excel spreadsheets in order to enable automatic updates of spreadsheet data from AutoCAD entities and vice versa.

Instructor: Dr. Cosmas Tzavelis, Ph.D., P.E.