Tutorials for VB .NET newbie?

Can anyone point to some tutorials to help get started with programming BricsCAD17 in VB.NET? I have done quite a lot of programming of AutoCAD via VB6 and VBA, but now being faced with the programming environment of VisualStudio2013 is quite overwhelming and I am stuck just trying understand how to connect to a running instance of BricsCAD.  I need to be able to access the full range of methods and properties offered by the .NET object model, not just the fairly limited set that was available via VBA/VB6 (previously I was using a long obsolete AutoCAD plug-in called AcadX that allowed access to more complex methods such as .GetFirstDerivateAt and .GetParameterAtDistance from VBA/VB6).  I can create a Class Library, make the required references as instructed in the Bricsys online help, and copy all the Imports files needed, but from that point I don't know how to proceed in connecting to the BricsCAD app.  Any help in just getting going would be very much appreciated.