This post is based on some information provided by Peter Muigg, a developer in Germany Austria who has long been a friend of Autodesk. In fact, if memory serves me well – and do step in if I’m mis-remembering, Peter – back in 1995 when I first joined the company, Peter delivered German-language ObjectARX training on behalf of Autodesk.
Peter reached out with this tip just before the holiday break: he needed to display a dialog on AutoCAD startup, but found that it was too soon to do so on IExtentionApplication.Initialize() (it’s assumed this module is either demand- or auto-loaded, by the way – manual loading doesn’t tend to exhibit this issue).
I typically use the approach of posting a command/queueing up a LISP expression to execute on startup to do this, but Peter has successfully used the Application.Idle event, instead.
Here’s Peter’s C# code:
using Autodesk.AutoCAD.ApplicationServices;
using Autodesk.AutoCAD.Runtime;
using System;
public class App : IExtensionApplication
{
static MyPalette _palette;
public void Initialize()
{
// ... other stuff
// Create a hook on the "Idle" event of the application class
Application.Idle += new EventHandler(Application_Idle);
}
void Application_Idle(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
// Remove the event handler as it is no longer needed
Application.Idle -= Application_Idle;
_palette = new MyPalette();
_palette.Visible = true;
}
// ...
}
The code itself shouldn't need any explanation – it's both simple and elegant. Thanks for sharing it, Peter!
Update:
Peter has since clarified he’s based in Innsbruck, so I’ve updated the post accordingly. My apologies for getting that wrong, especially being based in neighbouring Switzerland! :-(
