When I started out looking at this dll I was of the impression that I would be able to work with its various classes via pointers passed back and forth through declares. But further experimentation and reading seems to indicate that I cant do C++ classes directly through declares, is that correct?
So I cant instantiate classes directly in the library through declares or interact with them in any meaningful way without creating more code and returning those pointers to me.
Unless someone tells me the double secret way to do that sort of thing I guess Im going to learn to make plugins after all.
Thats what I figured. I spent several days this past week being stymied at every turn trying to make any of this work 
But Im on vacation next week and am not even going to think about it for a few days