Through the Interface

ADN DevCast Episode 7 – Creating an installer to deploy apps via the Autoloader

As a follow-up to their session on the Autoloader, AutoCAD 2012’s simplified deployment mechanism, Stephen and Fenton have recorded another DevCast focused on creating an installer to deploy apps via the Autoloader.

These two DevCasts are likely to be of relevance to anyone wishing to deploy their plugin via the “Apps” tab in Autodesk Exchange. There’s also a new Developer Center focused on this very task, providing the guidelines and requirements for publishing apps along with a couple of helpful DevTV sessions to get you started.

ADN DevCast Episode 6 – Autoloader

They’ve been at it again. Stephen and Fenton have recorded another informative DevCast, this time on the new simplified application loading mechanism in AutoCAD 2012, the Autoloader.

I’ll be following up with my own experience of using Autoloader, in due course, but this should be a great “getting started” resource.

ADN DevCast Episode 5 – AutoCAD for Mac development

After a longer-than-anticipated break, Stephen and Fenton are back with an all-new ADN DevCast. This one focuses on developing applications to work with AutoCAD for Mac.

They’ve managed to keep the timing of the DevCast down to 20 minutes, so we’re trying just posting this online (rather than having a separate download for offline viewing). Do post a comment if that doesn’t work well for you.

ADN DevCast Episode 4 – using Photofly and Photosynth with AutoCAD 2011

During my recent stay in the Bay Area, Stephen suggested I join the San Rafael-based DevTech team to record another ADN DevCast. Our hope was to cut down the length somewhat by focusing on a single topic, but those plans pretty much went out the window as soon as I started talking. :-S :-)

Thanks to Stephen, Gopi and Fenton for their warm welcome in San Rafael, and for keeping the session interesting with all their questions!

[We experienced a few technical glitches due to my system getting very close to its end-of-life (it only has a 90 GB hard-drive, so I’m forever uninstalling/reinstalling software and often run with just a few GB of free space available, which didn’t prove enough for Camtasia to record all we wanted it to). Stephen has done a great job of editing the issues out, but you may see the odd continuity quirk.]

You can also download the recording to view locally (37.4 MB), should you so choose.

These sessions are (very clearly) unscripted and I can see there may be a few areas that prove confusing to people. If that’s the case, please post a comment and I’ll do my best to clarify my intended meaning.

Addendum

Brian Mathews, our VP of Autodesk Labs, kindly watched the video and clarified a few points regarding Photo Scene Editor that I felt were worth sharing. (In case it wasn’t obvious to viewers of the DevCast, I’m far from being an expert in the use of the tool, so I would recommend that people especially interested in the use of Photo Scene Editor check out the videos linked from its Labs page.)

Brian raised two main points:

1. Use of the push-pin tool to create reference points does something more complex than snapping to existing points. In effect it densifies the point cloud at the location you have selected by performing further analysis on the images in the scene. Just the act of manually adding points creates a more dense and accurate point cloud at the selected locations.
2. When adding points to my glasses, during this demo, it may have given the impression that the pin didn’t quite get the right spot in 3D. In fact the positions were accurate, but the “splats” that were draped onto the model gave the impression they were not. Shrinking the size of the spats would have made this more clear, as the centre of each splat would have been accurately positioned, just not the edges.

ADN DevCast Episode 3

Once again, members of the DevTech Americas team have put together an entertaining and informative DevCast session on AutoCAD’s APIs. This time, Gopinath Taget joins Stephen Preston and Fenton Webb to present a number of interesting topics: boundary tracing, associative surfaces, 3D laser scanning and point cloud filtering.

I’ll be covering boundary tracing via this blog in the coming weeks, just as I expect to be doing more with point clouds (coincidentally a laser scanner from FARO – similar to the one Fenton and Gonzalo use in this DevCast – should be arriving for me today, so watch this space :-).

If you prefer you can download this episode for offline viewing (74.1 MB) and take a look at the accompanying samples (62 KB).

Enjoy! :-)

The Stephen and Fenton Show: ADN DevCast Episode 2

Well, they’ve done it again. Having received positive feedback on Episode 1, Stephen and Fenton have now recorded another ADN DevCast, this time with a guest appearance of another member of the DevTech team, Cyrille Fauvel.

During this episode they talk about disposing in .NET, diagnosing DLL load problems using gflags, and deepcloning in ObjectARX.

If you prefer you can download this episode for offline viewing (36 MB) and take a look at the accompanying samples (95KB).

Enjoy! :-)

The Stephen and Fenton Show: ADN DevCast Episode 1

You may or may not be aware that my team, DevTech, writes and publishes DevNotes on the ADN website, answers support questions submitted by ADN members using a tool we call DevHelp Online, records DevTV sessions, participates in events known as DevLabs, talks about our upcoming products at DevDays and delivers API training. (Seems like we need to get the branding police to work on that last one. :-)

So, in keeping with our theme we have started a new activity…

I’m proud (and not unamused, which is putting it mildly) to announce our first DevCast. Recorded recently by Stephen Preston and Fenton Webb from DevTech Americas (and yes, like me they both hail from the UK, as you will most likely be able to tell from their accents), this DevCast talks about some useful programming tips (such as using smart pointers in ObjectARX), some handy development tools (such as ArxDbg, MgdDbg and Inspector) and includes some live footage taken at the recent DevLab held in San Francisco, showing off some interesting work being done by developers working with AutoCAD.

It’s around 45 minutes in length, which is perhaps a touch long for a classic podcast, but there’s a lot of great stuff in there: even with my admittedly shrinking attention span I sat through the entire show in one sitting.

A quick side comment… in case you’re unfamiliar with Stephen’s legendarily dry sense of humour, I need to point out that Stephen and Fenton were not being entirely sincere in their comments about me (I’m really not that good at football, for instance ;-).

Anyway, enough with the introduction. Sit back and enjoy our first ADN DevCast, and be sure to let us know whether you like it and whether you have suggestions for future episodes.

You can also download this episode for offline viewing (92.8MB).

As mentioned earlier, there are some handy tools used in this episode:

• ArxDbg - a tool I talk about regularly that can be found on the ObjectARX SDK (for those who don't have the tools to compile C++ projects, here's a pre-built version of the .ARX for AutoCAD 2010).
• MgdDbg - a .NET application comparable to ArxDbg which can be found on the ADN site (for those of you without ADN access, here's the .DLL and its accompanying source project for AutoCAD 2010).
• Inspector - a tool that has been extremely popular since its mention in the Introduction to AutoCAD .NET Programming DevTV session. Here are versions of this tool for AutoCAD 2007-2009 and for AutoCAD 2010 with their respective C++ source projects.

All of these tools are provided "as is", bugs included.