Through the Interface

Hooking into AutoCAD copy & paste via Ctrl-C and -V

This was a fun question that came in from James Meading. I genuinely didn’t think I’d manage to look into it before the break, but it tweaked my interest during my trip back from the UK: I thought this might be a topic you would be interested in. I do not use ctrl-v for pasting entities, only text to command line. I already tried removing the keyboard shortcuts to ctrl-v via the cui, and that just makes ctrl-v not do anything when command line does not have focus. So I think I need to write a transparent function, make... Read more →

Animating transient AutoCAD graphics using .NET

A developer had an interesting requirement that I thought I’d spend some time looking at: to animate transient graphics inside AutoCAD according to data they’ve pulled in from an external simulation system. It’s clear that AutoCAD is really not an animation platform – we have other products that are better suited to working in this way – but I thought it would be interesting to see what was possible. I decided to take the implementation shown in this previous post and throw in some code to animate a few different things: Change the per-vertex colours of our transient box... Read more →

Finding out about changes to AutoCAD layers via the Bindable Object Layer using .NET

In the last few posts on this topic, we saw some examples of getting information from and controlling AutoCAD via its Bindable Object Layer. In this post, we’re going to look at a way to find out when changes are made to AutoCAD’s layer table: when layers are added, changed or removed. There are certainly other ways to do this: you can use Database.ObjectAppended(), ObjectModified() and ObjectErased() to find out about changes to LayerTableRecords, for instance, but this is an alternative approach that may be interesting to some people. In this implementation, we attach some event handlers to keep... Read more →

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 →

Creating a custom PaletteSet class exposing a close event inside AutoCAD using .NET (take 2)

Thanks, once again, to Scott McFarlane for working his magic and finding a simple way to make an approach work that I’d convinced myself wasn’t workable. (He took the implementation in my last post and adjusted it to work via a non-static event – something I had tried to do myself, but had somehow failed… I can probably blame it on post-DevDays fatigue… time for a week off, indeed. :-) Here’s the adjusted PaletteSet2 implementation, with the event no longer defined as static and the trigger happening via an instance rather than being fired statically: using Autodesk.AutoCAD.ApplicationServices; using Autodesk.AutoCAD.Runtime;... Read more →

Creating a custom PaletteSet class exposing a close event inside AutoCAD using .NET

In the last post, we saw some code that provided a relatively crude mechanism for finding out when a particular custom palette set gets closed by the user. In this post, we encapsulate this technique in a new class – which I’ve called PaletteSet2, for the want of a better name – that can be used to apply it to a number of custom palette sets at once. Here’s the C# code for the new PaletteSet2 implementation: using Autodesk.AutoCAD.ApplicationServices; using Autodesk.AutoCAD.Runtime; using Autodesk.AutoCAD.Windows; using System; [assembly: CommandClass(typeof(PaletteSet2))] namespace Autodesk.AutoCAD.Windows { public class PaletteSet2 : PaletteSet { // Hold a... Read more →

Adding an ObjectOverrule to stop AutoCAD objects from being erased using .NET

As a follow-on from the last post, today we’re going to see how to actually stop the erase operation from happening for a certain type of object (in this case we’re going to focus on Lines). Thanks for Stephen Preston for showing us the way in his comment on that post: inspired by his suggestion I ended up coding this before breakfast (although I do recommend taking care when throwing exceptions on an empty stomach ;-). Here’s the C# code implementing the PER (Prevent Erasure) command: using Autodesk.AutoCAD.ApplicationServices; using Autodesk.AutoCAD.DatabaseServices; using Autodesk.AutoCAD.EditorInput; using Autodesk.AutoCAD.Runtime; namespace WeLikeToBlock { public class... Read more →

Adding an ObjectOverrule to watch for erasure of AutoCAD objects using .NET

I started looking into the ObjectOverrule class, this week, to see if I could use it to prevent erasure of certain objects. My thinking was that overruling Erase() would allow me to control whether an object was erased or not, simply by my decision whether or not to super-message to the base implementation. That doesn’t appear to be the case, as whether I call the base implementation or not the object gets erased. I’ll have to confirm that this is expected behaviour, but in the meantime I thought I’d share a version of my code which adds a simple... Read more →

Displaying an AutoCAD ribbon tab contextually using .NET

This very interesting feature came to my attention via an internal discussion. Thanks, once again, to George Varghese for providing the base sample used for this post. At various times inside AutoCAD – such as when a block is selected, for instance – a specific ribbon tab is displayed “contextually”. As an example, when you select a Hatch object inside the AutoCAD editor, you should see a hatch-related contextual tab displayed: It’s possible to implement your own, comparable behaviour inside the AutoCAD editor using a combination of a simple .NET module, a XAML file and some CUI editing (or... Read more →

Adding an expanding textbox to AutoCAD’s ribbon using .NET

In the last post, we saw a great little sample for adding a textbox to AutoCAD’s ribbon which notifies your application of the “commands” entered into it (however you choose to interpret them in your code). In this post, we’ll take that further and have that textbox expand vertically as text gets entered, wrapping the contents across multiple lines (only breaking the text at the ends of words, too). Here’s the updated C# code, with modified lines in red. You can get the original file here. 1 using Autodesk.AutoCAD.ApplicationServices; 2 using Autodesk.AutoCAD.EditorInput; 3 using Autodesk.AutoCAD.Runtime; 4 using Autodesk.Windows; 5... Read more →

Translating tooltips in both AutoCAD and Revit using .NET

A quick update, today. Last week Jeremy posted a migrated version of the TransTips plug-in for AutoCAD, this time working inside Revit. Thanks to the shared use of AdWindows.dll in both products, this was actually really easy. After this initial version, it made sense to refactor the code to have a core, shared file (not necessarily a separate DLL component – sharing source can give many benefits for smaller projects, such as this) used to build plugin DLLs for both AutoCAD and Revit. Here’s the result: a single solution which will build TransTips DLLs for AutoCAD and Revit (including... Read more →

Automatic translation of AutoCAD tooltips using .NET

One of the great benefits I have from working in our Neuchâtel office is my proximity to a great many talented members of Autodesk’s Worldwide Localization team, who are responsible for translating most of our products into various languages. Over the last few months, I’ve been working even more closely than usual with that team, mainly looking at ways Autodesk might broaden the ability to localize our software. A couple of hot topics are of particular interest, these days, in the world of localization: machine translation and crowdsourcing. The implementation I’ll be showing over the next few posts actually... Read more →

Modifying AutoCAD tooltips using .NET

To continue on the theme established in the last post, today we’re going to go ahead and modify AutoCAD tooltips, prefixing them with a fixed string. This is the next step on the path to modifying them in a more meaningful way (to translate them into a different language, for instance). Here’s some C# code that implements a command to prefix all AutoCAD tooltips with a silly string (“Kean says this command …“): using Autodesk.AutoCAD.ApplicationServices; using Autodesk.AutoCAD.EditorInput; using Autodesk.AutoCAD.Runtime; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Windows.Controls; using System.Windows; namespace PrefixTooltips { public class Commands { List _handled = null; [CommandMethod("PREFTT")] public void... Read more →

Getting the basic content from AutoCAD tooltips using .NET

I’m working on an internal project that seems to be worth sharing externally. I’m looking at the potential for run-time modification (thinking mainly about translation) of tooltips displayed by AutoCAD. The first step towards realising this is clearly to determine when tooltips are going to be displayed and to establish the content of these tooltips. Here’s some C# code that does this (written with Visual Studio 2010, so users of prior versions may need to swap out my lambda function for a delegate or even a full event-handler function). You’ll also need to include AdWindows.dll in addition to the... Read more →

AutoCAD .NET Training DevTV Session 6: InputPoint Monitor

Another Friday, another installment of Wayne Brill’s AutoCAD .NET training DevTV series (to complement those from previous weeks). Today’s session is focused on the very useful InputPoint Monitor capability. This series of DevTV sessions is a companion for the new AutoCAD .NET training material available from the AutoCAD .NET Developer Center. Enjoy! :-) Read more →

AutoCAD .NET Training DevTV Session 4: Database Events, PaletteSet

Another Friday, another installment of Wayne Brill’s AutoCAD .NET training DevTV series (to complement those from previous weeks). Today’s session is focused on responding to database events and creating a palette-based user interface. This series of DevTV sessions is a companion for the new AutoCAD .NET training material available from the AutoCAD .NET Developer Center. Enjoy! :-) Read more →

Adding ortho support to the transient graphics AutoCAD MOVE using .NET

As promised, I ended up burning more that a few hours this evening (after being up very early for meetings this morning), to add orthographic drawing support to the code shown in the last post. It took quite some work, switching between UCS and WCS until my head was more than a little twisted. This thread on The Swamp provided well-needed inspiration, too (thanks, MickD :-). Here’s the C# code – I would have highlighted the modified lines in red, but the code is too wide to add 3-digit lines without it looking ugly, and – besides – I... Read more →

Using transient graphics to simulate AutoCAD’s MOVE command using .NET

A big thanks to Norman Yuan for the technique shown in this post. I stumbled across Norman’s post on this topic, and decided to take his code and rework it for posting here, with Norman’s permission, of course. Very interesting stuff! :-) First things first: you probably don’t have a burning need to reinvent either the wheel or AutoCAD’s MOVE command. That said, this is a technique that may be of interest to many of you, especially if – for whatever reason – you’re looking for an alternative to using a jig. The technique Norman has shown uses a... Read more →

Managing drag & drop from a palette into AutoCAD using .NET

I’m up early (after sleeping late) with jetlag, so I thought I may as well put together this post. My brain isn’t fully functional, I suspect, so forgive any errors (but please let me know about them, so I can fix them :-). I was inspired to implement the code in this post by an internal email thread, wherein Albert Szilvasy recommended implementing a comparable technique to a colleague. Please don’t blame Albert for the implementation details, though, they are all mine. The idea is simple: you have some kind of modeless PaletteSet, and you want to initiate and... Read more →

August’s Plugin of the Month: RefUcsSpy for AutoCAD

Just a quick note to say Glenn Ryan’s latest contribution, RefUcsSpy, is now live as August’s Plugin of the Month. I posted a preview of the application a few weeks ago, and you can now get the compiled plugin with complete source project from the Plugin of the Month page on Autodesk Labs. Thanks, Glenn! :-) You’ll note the posted plugin only claims support for AutoCAD 2009 onwards. This is because it relies on the Task Dialog implementation introduced in that version of AutoCAD. If you would like to get it working for prior versions of AutoCAD, you’ll find... Read more →