Through the Interface

My first F# application for AutoCAD

I couldn't resist... I just had to have a play with this technology, today. :-) Here are the steps to get your first (very simple) F# application working inside AutoCAD. First we need to download and install the latest F# distributable from here (at the time of writing this was the July 31 release - 1.9.2.9). We create a base F# project, selecting the "F# Project" template: We now add a new item to the project of type "F# Source File" to the project: The file created contains a lot of boilerplate code that is definitely worth looking at... Read more →

F# - a perfect fit for AutoCAD .NET programming?

I've just come across the announcement for F#, and am pretty excited about it. Here's the link to Soma's blog, and here's the Microsoft Research F# site. F# is a functional programming language. Functional programming has a long association with technical computing, one of the reasons LISP was chosen as the initial programming interface for AutoCAD. On a personal note: aside from the work I've done with LISP over the years, I also studied an obscure functional language called Miranda during my university days and have since worked a lot with XSLT (which is at least influenced by functional... Read more →

AU Handouts: Enriching Your DWF™ - Part 2

[This post continues from part 1 of this series. The source for the below applications is available here: DWF Toolkit application source, Design Review application source & Freewheel application source.] Mining the data with the DWF Toolkit Now we’re going to look at using the DWF Toolkit – the freely available, cross platform toolkit for creating and reading DWF files – to extract the “identity” and “material” metadata associated with our geometry. The DWF Toolkit is a C++ toolkit, so we have two components to our project: A C++ DLL that uses the DWF Toolkit to read a DWF,... Read more →

AU Handouts: Enriching Your DWF™ - Part 1

Introduction This session focuses on technologies that can be used to view and access DWF content downstream from Autodesk’s design products. Yesterday’s session focused on DWG – we’re going to take the model containing 3D solids that we created during that session and publish it to DWF, adding custom metadata. We can then look at how to harness this data in lightweight applications, whether to access it non-graphically or to view it. Firstly, why are we using 3D solids in this example? The choice was somewhat arbitrary – the point is really to demonstrate the ability to access properties... Read more →

"AutoCAD: 10 easy ways to crash your AutoCAD addin" webcast recording available for download

The recording of the October 4 session from the AutoCAD Development Masterclass series, "AutoCAD: 10 easy ways to crash your AutoCAD addin", has been posted here. I will let you know as soon as the recording of the October 18 webcast, "AutoCAD: .NET for LISP Programmers", has been posted. Enjoy! :-) Read more →

AU Handouts: There's More to .DWG Than AutoCAD® - Part 3

[This post continues from part 1 and part 2 of this series.] Building a full editing product using AutoCAD OEM Now we’re going to take our AutoCAD .NET module from the beginning of the session and build a complete CAD package around it. AutoCAD OEM allows you to build a custom-branded version of AutoCAD, with the subset of AutoCAD’s own features and additional functionality you choose to build in. A key feature of AutoCAD OEM is its security layer, which will stop any module being loaded that has not been built in by design. By limiting its extensibility –... Read more →

AU Handouts: There's More to .DWG Than AutoCAD® - Part 2

[This post continues from the last post, which I've been back and modified slightly since it was posted.] Using the DWG Thumbnail in a simple application Thumbnail images, when they exist inside a drawing, live in a predictable place at the beginning of the file. This makes it possible for a module – such as an ActiveX control – to extract the thumbnail information when pointed at a DWG file and generate an image from it. All done without the need for RealDWG (which also does this, but with a much heavier runtime component). A number of 3rd party... Read more →

AU Handouts: There's More to .DWG Than AutoCAD® - Part 1

[As mentioned in the last post, I'll be publishing chunks of the handouts for my AU classes via this blog over the coming weeks] Introduction This session focuses on downstream technologies that can be used to access DWG content outside of AutoCAD-based products. We’re going to start by creating a basic model inside AutoCAD comprised of 3D solid objects, and then look at a simple AutoCAD .NET application to access information about those solids. We will then take the same code and build a non-graphical (in terms of geometry - it does, after all, have a GUI) application around... Read more →

Autodesk University 2007 - AU BEAT

AU BEAT is a series of interview-style podcasts held with instructors, presenters and key AU stakeholders. The series provide a valuable glimpse into the programs and activities planned for this year's AU. On the subject of AU... over the next two weeks I'm going to be heads-down preparing handout material for my AU sessions. As a taster for my two sessions (DE319-2: There's More to .DWG Than AutoCAD® & DE401-2: Enriching Your DWF™), I'm going to post the hand-out material here, too. The two sessions will dive more deeply into the material created for the recorded presentation available from... Read more →

Free webcast: "AutoCAD: .NET for LISP Programmers"

On October 18th we're delivering a free AutoCAD development-oriented webcast entitled "AutoCAD: .NET for LISP Programmers". Check here for our overall API schedule, or go here to register directly. These sessions are typically held at the end of the working day in Europe (5pm CEST) which is the beginning of the day on the West Coast of the US (8am PDT). As usual, I'll post a link to the recording, once it's available. Read more →

Plotting a window from AutoCAD using .NET

This post extends this previous post that dealt with driving a single-sheet AutoCAD plot by adding some code to handle selection and transformation of a window to plot. First order of business was to allow the user to select the window to plot. For this I used the classic combination of Editor.GetPoint() for the first corner) and Editor.GetCorner() for the second. All well and good, but the points returned by these functions are in UCS (User Coordinate System) coordinates. Which meant that as it stood, the code would work just fine if (and only if) the view we were... Read more →

Allowing selection of an AutoCAD plot device and media name using .NET

A comment came in on this previous post regarding how best to know whether a media name is valid during your plot configuration. There are a few approaches, other than the one I chose of hardcoding the device and media names. The first is to implement a user interface of some kind which allows the user to select the device and media names. Another approach for setting the media name is to use PlotSettingsValidator.SetClosestMediaName() to choose the media name that most closely matches the paper size you desire. Today I'll focus on the first option, although I'm only going... Read more →

Microsoft to release source for .NET Framework Libraries

I thought I'd bring your attention to this post on Scott Guthrie's blog - this is a really exciting announcement for .NET developers everywhere: Releasing the Source Code for the .NET Framework Libraries Read more →

Previewing and plotting multiple sheets in AutoCAD using .NET

This was a fun one to work on. The code in this post combines and extends upon techniques shown in two earlier posts: one showing how to plot multiple sheets and the other showing how to preview a single-sheet plot. One of the key differences when plotting or previewing is that while plotting can directly support multiple sheets (assuming the device does so), previewing does not. The good news is that AutoCAD provides you the user interface elements to allow cycling through plots: the user is provided with "Next" and "Previous" buttons - it's then up to you to... Read more →

Free webcast reminder: "AutoCAD: 10 easy ways to crash your AutoCAD addin"

As mentioned in this previous post, tomorrow we're delivering a fun (and free!) AutoCAD development-oriented webcast entitled "AutoCAD: 10 easy ways to crash your AutoCAD addin". In case it's not obvious, the point is to highlight issues to avoid in your code, rather than showing you how to introduce critical bugs. :-) Check here for our overall API schedule, or go here to register directly. These sessions are typically held at the end of the working day in Europe (5pm CEST) which is the beginning of the day on the West Coast of the US (8am PDT). I will,... Read more →

Previewing and plotting a single sheet in AutoCAD using .NET

This week's posts take the code I threw together last week for single-sheet and multi-sheet plotting, and introduces the concept of "plot preview". I'm learning as I go for much of this, so there are structural (although usually not functional) changes being made to the code as it develops. In this instance, for example, I've factored off common functionality needed by both previewing and plotting into a single helper function. This will no doubt evolve further (and change in structure) when I come to apply the principle to multi-sheet plotting later in the week. Here's the C# code: using... Read more →