Through the Interface

AutoCAD 2016: Calling commands from AutoCAD events using .NET

It’s time to start looking in more detail at some of the new API capabilities in AutoCAD 2016. To give you a sense of what to expect in terms of a timeline, this week we’ll look at a couple of uses for DocumentCollection.ExecuteInCommandContextAsync() and next week we’ll look at point cloud floorplan extraction and (hopefully) security and signing. The first use of ExecuteInCommandContextAsync() I wanted to highlight was one raised in a blog comment a couple of months ago. The idea is simple enough: we want to be able to launch a command reliably from an event handler, in... Read more →

Docking a WPF window inside AutoCAD – Part 3

In this post we’re wrapping up this mini-series on docking, which is part of a much broader story arc around a “command-line helper” tool, of course. But then we’re reaching the end of that, too, I suspect, as the app’s just about done. Hopefully it’s ready for posting to Autodesk Labs, at least. Last time we added right-click dragging to allow our keywords window to be moved around without interrupting the active command. Now we’re taking it a step further to preview docking at one of the four corners of the drawing window, as well as to actually dock... Read more →

Docking a WPF window inside AutoCAD – Part 2

I’m happy to say that the implementation I mentioned in the last post ended up being pretty straightforward. Which is actually great, as I have some important posts to work on for next week. :-) Today we’re going to take a look at the next stage of the “command-line helper” implementation: basic right-click movement of the global keywords dialog, so we can set a custom location for the dialog without needing to use the KWSDOCK command. Here’s the code in action: The main work for this stage was to add support for right-click, mouse move and right mouse-button up... Read more →

Docking a WPF window inside AutoCAD – Part 1

During the course of this week we’re going to look at extending the command-line helper sample posted last week by allowing our global keywords window to “dock” to the four corners of the drawing window as well as to remain fixed at a custom location somewhere on the screen. I use the term “dock” here loosely, as we’re really just placing it in one of the corners of the drawing window. If we wanted a modeless dialog that was properly docked into AutoCAD then we’d almost certainly want to use a PaletteSet. Here’s a quick video demonstrating the KWSDOCK... Read more →

Adding support for global keywords at AutoCAD’s command-line using .NET – Part 2

Today we’re going to look at the implementation talked about in the last post: we’re going to see how it’s possible to use the Application.PreTranslateMessage() method to hack AutoCAD’s message-loop and basically convert typed keywords into global ones. This is actually pretty neat (yes, even if I do say so myself :-) and frankly I’m surprised it works. Here’s the overall approach: Track the characters typed into the command-line Add individual characters into a list Backspace removes the tail of the list Arrow-keys invalidate the tracking: if the user accesses entries in the command-history we can’t deal with that,... Read more →

Adding support for global keywords at AutoCAD’s command-line using .NET – Part 1

This post carries on from this series from a couple of weeks ago: Adding a global keyword menu to AutoCAD using WPF – Part 1 Adding a global keyword menu to AutoCAD using WPF – Part 2 Enabling global commands on localized AutoCAD versions using .NET The overall goal behind these posts was to create a “command-line helper” tool to make it easier for people who know the English version of AutoCAD (or an AutoCAD-based vertical) to work with a corresponding localized version. Basically because some people learn AutoCAD using an English version – perhaps during their studies –... Read more →

Adding a global keyword menu to AutoCAD using WPF – Part 2

After introducing this project in the last post, now it’s time to share some code. The project, as it currently stands, contains three source files: the first one relates to AutoCAD – it implements the various commands we’ll use to attach event handlers to tell us when to display (or hide) keywords and the other two files relate to the UI we’ll use to display them. We’re going to use an invisible window which has a child popup containing a listbox of our keywords. Here’s the application in action – for now in English AutoCAD, as that’s what I... Read more →

Adding a global keyword menu to AutoCAD using WPF – Part 1

I’m up in the mountains, supposedly on vacation, but as one of our children woke up with a fever, I’m skipping the morning session on the slopes to stay home with him. Which gives me the chance to start writing up a little project I’ve been working on for our Localization team. Here’s the idea… apparently it’s relatively common in certain countries for AutoCAD users to learn the product in English but then end up working with a localized version of the software. While it’s always possible to use global commands and keywords by prefixing an underscore, it’s not... Read more →

Styling your HTML5 progress meter with CSS3

After yesterday’s fun with creating an HTML5-based progress meter for AutoCAD, today we’re going to have some more fun styling it with CSS. To recap, here’s the progress meter that comes “out of the box”, with the default styling from Chromium on Windows. The first thing we need to do for our various changes is to use CSS to disable the default styling, at which point we can then use CSS to override it. progress { width: 100%; -webkit-appearance: none; } Here’s how our progress meter looks when unstyled: Now that it’s stripped bare, we can apply some styling... Read more →

Creating your own AutoCAD progress meter using HTML5 and JavaScript

This week I’ve spent quite a bit of time looking into future API features. For one of them I needed to create a progress meter, and thought to myself “why not create one in HTML5?” And as it’s nothing specific to a future product release, I decided to go ahead and post it now. For context, here’s the way AutoCAD’s standard progress meter currently looks, displayed using the code from this previous post: So why would you go head and create your own progress meter? A few different reasons come to mind… yes, AutoCAD has its own, but perhaps... Read more →

Selecting a linetype and applying it to a set of AutoCAD entities using .NET

I received this request from Mateusz Andrzejczak, over the weekend: I have problem with LineTypeDialog. Your part of the code is working perfectly, but i have problem with modifying the values. I have a SelectionSet that holds all object that are selected with using a filter. I want to use LineTypeDialog to select linetype and then accept so all the object in selection set will change to selected linetype. I'm working with this for a few hours and it's not working. Any tip for me? The question related to this old post. I started by sending Mateusz a link... Read more →

Displaying a graph of AutoCAD drawing objects using JavaScript and .NET

It seems like I’ve been living in JavaScript land (and no, I deliberately didn’t say “hell” – it’s actually been fun :-) for the last few weeks, between one thing or another. But I think I’ve finally put the finishing touches on the last of the JavaScript API samples I’ve prepared for AU 2014. This sample was inspired by Jim Awe – an old friend and colleague – who is working on something similar for another platform. So I can’t take any credit for the way it works, just for the plumbing it took to make it work with... Read more →

Adding more speech recognition to our stereoscopic Google Cardboard viewer

One of the pieces of feedback I received from internal folk on the prototype VR app I developed for Google Cardboard and then added voice recognition to was “it’d be really cool to add ViewCube-like navigation commands”. Which basically meant adding “front”, “back”, “left”, “right”, “top” & “bottom” to the list of voice commands recognised by annyang and have them hooked up to a function that changes the view accordingly. The main complication being the fact that some models come in with “Z up” despite the majority having “Y up”. Hopefully none will come in with “X up”, an... Read more →

Adding speech recognition to our stereoscopic Google Cardboard viewer

I nearly named this post “Creating a stereoscopic viewer for Google Cardboard using the Autodesk 360 viewer – Part 4”, leading on from the series introduction and then parts 1, 2 & 3. But then I decided this topic deserved it’s very own title. :-) The seed for this post was sown during the VR Hackathon, at the beginning of which I had an inspiring chat with Theo Armour. Not only does Theo have a name worthy of a gladiator – and it turns out there is a list of gladiator names on the Internet, just one more reason... Read more →

Displaying the area of the last AutoCAD entity in an HTML palette using JavaScript and .NET

The title of this one is a little specific – the post actually deals with the scenario of passing data from .NET to an HTML-defined palette, as well as some other tips & tricks – but it’s something I wanted to show. Here’s the basic idea: whenever a closed curve gets added to the drawing, we want to display its area as the only item in an HTML palette. We also want the palette to update when objects get erased, etc., which makes life somewhat trickier. To set the scene, here’s a quick screencast of the finished application in... Read more →

JavaScript in AutoCAD: Viewing 3D solids using Three.js

After introducing the series and looking at sample applications for 2D graphics using Paper.js and 2.5D graphics using Isomer, it’s now really time to go 3D. We’re going to use much of the same code we saw in the last post – with some simplification as we no longer need to sort the solids by distance – but this time we’re going to feed data into an HTML client app that’s fundamentally similar in nature to the one seen in this series of posts using Three.js. I’m happy to have some experience using Three.js, because it happens to be... Read more →

JavaScript in AutoCAD: Revision clouds using Paper.js

Having introduced this series, it’s time to look at some code. This first sample shows how to create and host a web-page that uses an external graphics library – in our case Paper.js – within an AutoCAD application. The main “trick” to this is going to be getting the data from the HTML page into AutoCAD, which we’ll do by extending AutoCAD’s shaping layer. Bear in mind that this code will work with AutoCAD 2015, but I can’t guarantee it will do so with 2014 (the JavaScript API was very much a “preview” in that release). Something I should... Read more →

Adding a WPF document tab in AutoCAD 2015 using .NET

A few people expressed an interest in understanding how AutoCAD 2015’s ability to open HTML pages inside its frame – shown in this recent post – could be extended to work with “native” user interfaces. This post shows how that can be done using WPF – the other supported mechanism for adding new documents to AutoCAD’s main frame introduced in the 2015 release. Just as with last week’s post, there really isn’t that much to it: you just need to add your own WPF UserControl to the project and load that into an Autodesk.AutoCAD.Windows.WPFDocumentWindow object and pass it to... Read more →

Call for proposals for Autodesk University 2014 approaching

The “call for proposals” for AU2014 is going out on April 23rd and will remain open for about a month. This is approaching quickly, so get your thinking hats on if you’re considering submitting a class proposal. From my side I’m thinking about a few possible topics: Implementing a tangible user interface for AutoCAD using SensorTag Integrating a web-based user interface into AutoCAD via its JavaScript API I’m also toying around with the idea of doing a kind of “meta” session, during which we’d look at some of my favourite blog posts/areas of research over the years. Something like... Read more →

Supporting AutoCAD 2015’s dark theme

After a little fun last Tuesday around a pink theme for AutoCAD – for which I got at least a few “we should totally do that”s from internal folk in response, so watch this space ;-) – today we’re going to talk more seriously about what’s needed to support the dark theme in your applications. But before that, a big thanks to Lee Ambrosius, who owns – and does a fantastic job with – AutoCAD’s developer documentation. Lee pointed out the online documentation which helped me create this post. If you’re interested in the work Lee and team has... Read more →