MicroStation and .NET

.NET

MicroStation & .NET
InterOps and MicroStationDGN.Application

C# and VB.NET

LA Solutions staff have written a number of technical articles. These include programming, MicroStation^®, GeoGraphics^™, and relational databases. Some articles describe aspects of MicroStation software development, and others provide code examples.

You may also find the BE Newsletter useful. It is published by Bentley Systems.

Microsoft^® .NET Development (VB.NET and C#)

Visual Studio .NET provides a rich development environment and supplies a host of user-interface widgets. The steps required to create a .NET application are complex, and covered in part by our .NET Development page.

Developing a COM Server with .NET

Use Visual Studio .NET to develop a COM server implemented in a DLL. This article shows the tricks and pitfalls.

MicroStation VBA is a great tool to develop an application fast. But it lacks the slick user interface and other features of .NET. By writing a COM server with Visual Studio .NET, you can benefit from the intimacy of MicroStation VBA and the richness of .NET.

Example COM Server Solution

This Visual Studio .NET solution implements a DLL for transforming XML to HTML.

It includes the source code and the Visual Studio solution to let you build, modify, and test the server and several clients. Example clients include a C#.NET application and two C++ applications. There is also a VBA client embedded in an Excel workbook.

Example Client Projects

These Visual Studio .NET projects show different ways of connecting a client application to a .NET DLL …

A C#.NET client
A C++/CLR client
A C++ client in two parts
1. A standard C++ client
2. A C++/CLR wrapper that isolates the C++ client from .NET

MicroStation Development and .NET

LINQPad: The Ultimate C# / VB Scratchpad

LINQPad is a valuable tool for .NET developers. LINQPad lets you test fragments of VB.NET or C# code. Cut-and-paste a code statement or fragment into LINQPad for instant code validation and testing.

If you're involved with database development, then LINQPad can help you with relational queries or XML queries (that's what the LINQ in LINQPad is about).