Framework Overview

What the SDK is for

The Tekniq SDK is a development framework for building Tekla plugins in a more object-oriented and maintainable way.

Tekla already provides its own API through developer.tekla.com. That API is powerful, but when building plugin dialogs and plugin input with the standard Tekla approach, developers are often limited to basic value types such as:

• int
• double
• string

This means that more advanced, object-oriented plugin development quickly becomes difficult. As soon as a plugin grows in size or complexity, developers often end up writing a lot of repetitive glue code to map simple values back and forth into real application logic.

The Tekniq SDK solves that problem.

The core idea

The SDK allows developers to work with real objects and structured models, instead of building everything around loose primitive values.

That means you can design your plugin around clear classes such as:

• settings objects
• feature models
• view models
• nested configuration structures
• reusable domain models

Instead of manually managing a large collection of separate int, double, and string values, you can work in a way that fits modern C# development much better.

Why that matters

This object-oriented approach makes plugins:

• easier to understand
• easier to maintain
• easier to extend
• less error-prone

It also becomes much easier to split functionality into reusable components instead of building one large monolithic plugin.

For simple plugins this already saves time. For larger plugins, it changes the entire development experience.

UI controls that connect directly to your models

A major strength of the SDK is that its user controls can be connected directly to your object structure.

Instead of manually wiring every field yourself, the SDK makes it possible to bind controls to properties inside your models and view models. This creates a much cleaner relationship between:

• the UI
• the plugin data
• the application logic

That means developers can build dialogs and tools faster, while keeping the codebase much more structured.

In practice

With the standard Tekla plugin approach, a developer often works from individual primitive fields and must manually translate those values into meaningful logic.

With the Tekniq SDK, the developer can work from a proper object model first, and then connect the UI to that model using reusable controls.

So the SDK is not a replacement for the Tekla API.

It is a framework on top of the Tekla API that makes plugin development more modern, more scalable, and more aligned with object-oriented programming.

In one sentence

The Tekniq SDK exists to make Tekla plugin development object-oriented, structured, and easier to build, instead of being limited to plugins built around loose int, double, and string values.

Build Tekla plugins with real object models instead of primitive dialog values.

Or put another way:

• The Tekniq SDK brings object-oriented plugin development to Tekla.
• Tekla gives you the API. The Tekniq SDK gives you a modern development framework on top of it.