This paper describes the design of CODE ? Component Oriented Distributed Environment, which is a framework for building component-based distributed applications. This system uses the DCOM technology to provide a flexible infrastructure that supports communication among processes spread across a local area network (Intranet). A component-oriented architecture is also defined to make an easy and intuitive access to LAN-distributed processes, through a high level of abstraction. The encapsulation of these processes into software components allows developers to compose them in different ways in order to develop correct and cost-effective distributed applications. Another feature is the visual creation of distributed applications by drag & drop. We identify the requirements of a software layer that supports LAN client-server distributed computing, and we suggest a design that meets those requirements. Though our implementation uses C++, the fundamental ideas apply to any object-oriented language that supports DCOM programming, messaging and threads.