AcadDatabase

oh, you posted this > Is it possible to look through a drawing file's database in VBA, without

Hi Rob, Typically developers use a library that allows loading the DWG file into a 'database'. Then your code can query the database and retrieve the required information. We at CAD & Company (in the Netherlands) started to use the official RealDWG library by AutoDesk, available only to selected developers for a yearly fee. Other libraries are available, but I believe none are free.

An other option to get data from a specific file is to use an IFilter. Actually IFilters are developed to be used by search indexers such as Windows Desktop Search or SharePoint, but anyone can use the ifilter in custom code. The IFilter serves as a translater and would read the textual contents from the file for you, and you can then programmatically extract the text from the IFIlter.

We are developing a new version of our DWG IFilter. The new version is able to read files up to AutoCAD 2007 and 2008 - and is expected to be released in a couple of weeks. A free trial will be available, also it is free for non-commercial desktop use. For now, you can start testing with our 2005 trial DWG IFilter, available at

I have not seen VBA samples to use the IFilter in such a way, I would be interested in helping you here - especially when this results in cool code samples I can publisch on my IFilter support site. Some samples in C# and VB are available. I believe you may be able to use the code sample from the next article:

So, if the information you need is text-based, you can use our IFilter and go with the IFilter trick. You can try this for free. Alternatively you would need to purchase a dwg reading library. Good luck, and please keep us posted!