Cad application with visual basic 2010

[aasclav]

Hello all,
I would like to make a cad application (something like autocad) but i don't know where to start. My experience is little in oop, so far i was using procedural programming. I' m willing to learn anything it takes to accomplish that.
Could anyone tell me how should i start? What control should i use for the modelspace?
Thank you.

[cicatrix]

That's a grand plan for someone with as little experience as you are.
Well, there's nothing impossible, I guess, but the problem is that either you will need to use some 3d graphics library (like 3d portion of DirectX, for example) or develop your own one. In the first case you'll need to learn intimately the aspects of writing managed DirectX applications and in the second one - you'll be coding and debuggin that stuff for several months at least.
There are no components or controls that immediately fit your need, moreover I wouldn't advise you to use anything that works with GDI+ due to the performance issues. I know many programmers who 'learn how to program' by looking a component written by someone else and placing it on a form. Your particular problem is in the fact that such complex controls as modelspace, even if they exist, are probably not free and cost a lot of money.
Besides, with everything what concerns graphics processing and complex calculations I would not use .Net managed code at all, because it's being rather slow, compared to C++, for example.

[aasclav]

Could a WPF application be helpful?

[cicatrix]

Yes, you can try that with WPF, but again - the whole thing will work slower than any similar app written in C++. Much slower in some cases.

[aasclav]

Thanks, i will look a solution with WPF. I have no experience in C++

[cicatrix]

I would stick to Microsoft XNA then, not WPF

[aasclav]

[Evil_Giraffe]

and in the second one - you'll be coding and debuggin that stuff for several months at least.

Actually, developing a control that renders a wireframe of a 3D model is not actually that complicated, as long as you know what you are doing with the maths, and separate out the model/world/view/window spaces correctly. It's very simple transformations. You could do it in a couple of days (and, for the record, I have!).

Where it would become complicated is writing the code that allows the user to interact with the elements in the wireframe. This might take a couple of weeks, though, not months, and could be done incrementally as needed.

So, no not impossible, but possibly considered "advanced"?


WPF won't help you much because it doesn't have a wireframe mode for its 3D features. (I looked in to that back when WPF was on its first release - things may have changed since then, but I've not heard that it has).


I would suggest that learning a library like DirectX in order to render the sort of graphics you want in a CAD program to be vastly overkill.