ACA: Accessing AEC Data in Formula Properties for Multiple Versions

2019-09-09: Updated to include AutoCAD Architecture 2020.

Some "advanced" formula properties (see this blog post for an example) that pull in AEC Data not available in the automatic properties have to reference one of the AEC modules, and need to include the first two version numbers for the current version of AutoCAD^® Architecture or AutoCAD^® MEP that is running. The version numbers can be obtained by running the AECVERSION command in a given version. For example, AecX.AecBaseApplication.8.1 is the Aec Base Application module for the 2019 version.

If you want a formula property to work across multiple versions, it has to know what version is running to be able to call the correct application version. For a small number of versions, that can be built into the formula property without too much difficulty or confusion (see previously linked example). But I recently had a reason to revisit a formula that retrieved the elevation of a ceiling object (based on the Wall elevation formula in the example blog post), and, over ten years later, there are more than a small number of versions that could be supported. In this case, I decided that it made more sense to pull out the code to determine the AECVERSION numbers into a separate formula property. This would be particularly effective if multiple formula properties needed to access it. Taking it one step farther, the following code will give you just the numeric suffix, which the primary formula property could then concatenate with the name of the Aec Application being referenced. Versions 2008 through 2019 are supported by this code.

Set acadApp = GetObject(,"AutoCAD.Application")

'ACADVER values:
'ACD-A2008 = "17.1s (LMS Tech)"
'ACD-A2009 = "17.2s (LMS Tech)"
'ACD-A2010 = "18.0s (LMS Tech)"
'ACD-A2011 = "18.1s (LMS Tech)"
'ACD-A2012 = "18.2s (LMS Tech)"
'ACD-A2013 = "19.0s (LMS Tech)"
'ACD-A2014 = "19.1s (LMS Tech)"
'ACD-A2015 = "20.0s (LMS Tech)"
'ACD-A2016 = "20.1s (LMS Tech)"
'ACD-A2017 = "21.0s (LMS Tech)"
'ACD-A2018 = "22.0s (LMS Tech)"
'ACD-A2019 = "23.0s (LMS Tech)"
'ACD-A2020 = "23.1s (LMS Tech)"

acadVerString = acadApp.ActiveDocument.GetVariable("ACADVER")

'Set ACD-A application string, based on version running:
Select Case acadVerString
 Case "17.1s (LMS Tech)"
  RESULT = ".5.5"
 Case "17.2s (LMS Tech)"
  RESULT = ".5.7"
 Case "18.0s (LMS Tech)"
  RESULT = ".6.0"
 Case "18.1s (LMS Tech)"
  RESULT = ".6.5"
 Case "18.2s (LMS Tech)"
  RESULT = ".6.7"
 Case "19.0s (LMS Tech)"
  RESULT = ".7.0"
 Case "19.1s (LMS Tech)"
  RESULT = ".7.5"
 Case "20.0s (LMS Tech)"
  RESULT = ".7.7"
 Case "20.1s (LMS Tech)"
  RESULT = ".7.8"
 Case "21.0s (LMS Tech)"
  RESULT = ".7.9"
 Case "22.0s (LMS Tech)"
  RESULT = ".8.0"
 Case "23.0s (LMS Tech)"
  RESULT = ".8.1"
 Case "23.1s (LMS Tech)"
  RESULT = ".8.2"
 Case Else
  RESULT = "Unknown"
End Select

Note that any line beginning with a single quote is a comment, and is ignored when the VBScript code is evaluated. The ACADVER values shown in the initial comments could be removed; I like to keep them for easy reference, as I tend to forget the ACADVER value for any given release.