COM Add-in development

[Chris Roth [ Visio MVP ]]

Hi All,

I'm developing a VB.NET COM add-in for Visio, but am frustrated by the fact
that I have to restart Visio every time I want to test changes to the
add-on. Is there a technique for separating the components such that the
main COM add-in is small, lean, and doesn't change very often, but can
access code in another library that is being updated often?


I've tried developing a .NET .exe which can re-synch with Visio when I run
after re-compile. This works, but very poorly. For instance:

- GetObject doesn't work very well with .NET. It's not reliable.
(I read something about a Running Table or whatnot...)
- When I do Get Visio, MarkerEvents seem to drop out sporadically
- It doesn't seem possilbe to create a proper dialog - it is a separate
window from Visio, and shows behind Visio.

In other words, .EXEs in Visio and .NET suck, or else I am missing some key
tricks.

Thanks,

Chris

 

[Bill K. [MSFT]]

Hi Chris!
You can load or unload com addin dll's with a macros such as this:
Application.COMAddIns("FlowchartSample.dsrVisioConnect").connect = false
The ProgID above is for one of the SDK samples, so replace it with the
ProgID of your component.
connect=false will unload the dll, and connect=true will load the dll.

Hope this helps,