Through the Interface

Using AutoCAD’s Bindable Object Layer to change the current view using .NET

After looking at how the Bindable Object Layer (BOL) in AutoCAD might be used to get information about the current drawing, in today’s post we’re going to see how it can also be used to manipulate that data (in a fairly limited, albeit useful, way). But first, let’s talk a bit about the origins of the BOL. It was first introduced as an architectural feature of AutoCAD when we were looking at delivering AutoCAD for Mac. It’s common, these days, for programming frameworks to provide some kind of data-binding facility to simplify the creation of UIs: both WPF and... Read more →

Cloud & Mobile DevBlog

To complement the DevBlogs for AutoCAD, Infrastructure Modeling, AEC and Manufacturing (and in case you missed them, here are their respective announcements), the ADN team has now launched a DevBlog focused on Cloud & Mobile development. You might consider this another “horizontal” blog, in the sense that over time it will prove to be a valuable resource for people using our products (and, I suspect, many people who don’t) in all the industries we serve. I’ll drop a note to Gopi, to suggest he adds a link to my own cloud & mobile series, for future reference. It seems... Read more →

Dumping data from AutoCAD’s Bindable Object Layer using .NET

Some time ago, I posted code that used the Autodesk.AutoCAD.Windows.Data namespace to list the hatch patterns in the current drawing. Fenton Webb posted a follow-up on the AutoCAD DevBlog that took this further, extracting additional data from AutoCAD and using it to populate an Excel spreadsheet. Within that post, Fenton showed the technique required to access and iterate across other data collections – something I hadn’t managed to do when creating my original post. Rather than repeat exactly what Fenton has put together – which is really nice, do take a look at it – I’m just taking a... Read more →

Face tracking inside AutoCAD using Kinect

After discovering, earlier in the week, that version 1.5 of the Kinect SDK provides the capability to get a 3D mesh of a tracked face, I couldn’t resist seeing how to bring that into AutoCAD (both inside a jig and as database-resident geometry). I started by checking out the pretty-cool FaceTracking3D sample, which gives you a feel for how Kinect tracks faces, super-imposing an exaggerated, textured mesh on top of your usual face in a WPF dialog: I decided to go for a more minimalist (which also happens to mean it’s simpler and with less scary results :-) approach... Read more →

Integrating Kinect with AutoCAD 2013

As promised in the last post, today we’re going to see the adjusted point cloud import workflow applied to the previously posted Kinect integration samples. This was also an opportunity to look at the improvements in version 1.5 of the Kinect for Windows SDK. When the SDK was announced, my initial reaction was “OK, but what we really need is finger-tracking”, especially as it was right around the time Leap Motion made their big announcement. But there have nonetheless been some really interesting capabilities added to the Kinect SDK with version 1.5: Seated mode skeletal tracking You can choose... Read more →

Indexing point clouds programmatically in AutoCAD 2013

Thanks to RS for raising this issue via a blog comment and to my esteemed colleague, Christer Janson, for suggesting the solution during England’s epic Euro 2012 victory over Sweden on Friday evening (sorry, Christer – I couldn’t help but rub it in just a little ;-). On a slightly more serious note, I find it very painful to watch England play, at the best of times, and while I was happy “we” won, I was sad to see Sweden left with no chance of continuing past the group stage. So it goes. Those of you who have played... Read more →

The latest on Windows Azure

A few things have happened over the last week or so that have got me looking, once again, at Windows Azure: Firstly, there was an exciting release announced last week (I attended the webcast online from San Francisco, where the event happened to be taking place), prior to this week’s TechEd. Among the key features were: Support for Linux instances These will presumably be cheaper, given the lack of OS licensing costs Virtual Machine capability IaaS for those that prefer it over PaaS (something no doubt learned from the popularity of AWS) Select from the online Image Gallery or... Read more →

AutoCAD API wishlist survey

Hot on the heels of my last post regarding this year’s API wishlist surveys, Stephen Preston has announced on the AutoCAD DevBlog the launch of this year’s AutoCAD API wishlist survey. The survey will remain open until June 22nd, but don’t delay – you’ll find it very quick to complete. This year’s survey has a somewhat different format: it has a number of questions dedicated to understanding your needs around AutoCAD WS and developing for the cloud. This doesn’t mean we’re no longer interested in the desktop – nothing could be further from the truth – so be sure... Read more →

API wishlist surveys

This year’s API wishlist surveys for AutoCAD Civil 3D, Inventor, Navisworks and Revit are now live: AutoCAD Civil 3D Autodesk Inventor Autodesk Navisworks Autodesk Revit Our Engineering teams use the results from these surveys to help steer their ongoing API development priorities, release on release. If you have feedback or specific requests regarding our APIs, this is a great way to get them in front of the right people inside Autodesk. I’d been holding off posting these links – with the hope I could also include AutoCAD’s – but as the deadline is here it seems prudent not to... Read more →

Homeward bound

I’ve spent the best part of the last two weeks in the Bay Area, which has been fantastic. It was great to attend Autodesk’s annual, internal Tech Summit, both to network with colleagues and to find out about some of the really interesting projects being worked on within the company. It was also really good to reconnect with members of the AutoCAD Engineering and ADN teams. While there’s been quite a lot of work over the last few weeks, there has also been some time for play: The evening social event at San Francisco’s TechShop. Renting bikes in Napa... Read more →

Around the Corner: a new M&E developer blog

A long-time friend, colleague and worldwide M&E Manager for ADN, Cyrille Fauvel, has started Around the Corner, a blog focused on developing with Autodesk Maya, MotionBuilder, Mudbox and FBX. A member of Cyrille’s team, Kristine Middlemiss, who co-authors the popular Maya Station blog, will also be co-authoring this new blog. For anyone interested in developing with Autodesk’s Media and Entertainment products, this is going to be an extremely valuable resource: these two really know their stuff. Welcome to the blogosphere, Cyrille, and well done for contributing to a second blog, Kristine! :-) Read more →

Cloud & mobile series summary

As we reach the end of this long series of posts on moving code to the cloud – and a look at ways to use the functionality from a wide variety of applications, many of them on mobile devices – I felt it was worth putting together a quick summary post to reinforce the overall message (which may have been a bit lost in the sheer volume of information). Firstly, here are the posts in this series, including those looking at the original creation of the “desktop” application functionality: Creating the core desktop functionality Circle packing in AutoCAD: creating... Read more →

Creating a 3D viewer for our Apollonian service using iOS – Part 3

After starting the sub-series focused on iOS, I held off completing it until I could actually test the code on a physical iOS device. A big thanks to Andy Chang from our Toronto office for getting me set up with the ADP membership and my iPad 2 added to the list of usable development devices. I won’t talk about the steps needed to provision apps for iOS devices – there seems to be enough information available on the web for that – but I will say it ended up being less complicated than I expected. That’s not to say... Read more →