AfraLISP - Learn AutoLISP for AutoCAD productivity

VBA Primer - Part 2

by Kenny Ramage

When you insert the form you might have noticed that another dialogue popped up. This is the Control Dialogue Toolbox. It look's like this :

Toolbox

To add a control to your form, select the desired control and click on the form in the position that you would like the control to be. Select the CommandButton control and place it on your form. Your form should now look like this :

Command Button

Now, using the properties panel, change the properties of the command button to the following :

	(Name)		CommandButton1
	Caption		OK
	Default		True
	Font		Arial - Bold - Size 8
	Accelerator	O

Your button should now look like this :

Command Button

The Caption property is, of course, the text that appears within the button. The Default property means that if Enter is selected the event procedure asSigned to this control is triggered. The Accelerator property is the letter of the caption that needs to be selected, along with the Ctrl key, to select this control.

Now add the following controls to your form and change the properties to the values listed below :

Command Button

	(Name)		CommandButton2
	Cancel		True
	Caption		Cancel
	Accelerator	C
	Font		Arial - Bold - Size 8

The Cancel property means that if Esc is selected the event procedure assigned to this control is triggered.

Label

	(Name)		Label1
	Caption		Choose Layer:
	Font		Arial - Bold - Size 8

List Box

	(Name)		Listbox1
	Font		Arial - Bold - Size 8

You can move a control by simply dragging and dropping it. To re-size it, just grip the re-size boxes at the edges and corners of the control. Now move and re-size your controls and the form until the dialogue box looks similar to this :

Formatted form

Note: Do you see how easy it is to create dialogue boxes in VBA compared to DCL. "What a pleasure!"

Now that we have got our basic dialogue box we need to make it do something. Part 3, look out, here we come…