Is it possible to write a VSTA Macro in Visual Studio?

Hi everybody,

first of all excuse me if my english is not 100% accurate as this is not my native language

I used the search function of the forum and did not find an answer so i opened this new discussion.

I'm developing many different Macros for our customers.

For new macros that i can write from scratch, i like to use VSTA instead of VBA because of the better IDE, cleaner Code and the .NET Framework Support.

VSTA in SolidWorks is ok and much better then VBA in my opinion, but it is relatively old as it is based on Visual Studio 2005 and for this reason just supports .NET Framework 2.0.

Some nice Features like LINQ Queries, WPF and other things were introduced with .NET 3.5 and I would like to take advantage of them in VSTA Macros.

My questions are:

1. Is there a way to write an executable DLL like the VSTA ones in Visual Studio 2010+?

I know writing an Add-In would be possible but the customers don't allways want Add-Ins..

2. Is it possible to upgrade the VSTA IDE in SolidWorks to a newer Version?

3. Are there any informations around if coming SolidWorks version will come with a more actual VSTA version?

Thanks in advance and Best regards

SolidworksApi macros