Through the Interface

Less than a week until the Exchange Apps Portathon

The clock is ticking… the Exchange Apps Portathon is being held next weekend, and it’s not too late to participate. If you’re not sure what this is all about, take a look at two previous posts about this event. In a nutshell: Autodesk is paying developers $100 for each of the first 5 apps that developers publish to Exchange Apps before the end of the weekend, and the DevTech team will be online for a solid 48 hours to help people get there. On a side note, the DevTech team now has a YouTube channel for their DevTV sessions.... Read more →

Recorded AutoCAD .NET training available for download

Over the last couple of months, Wayne Brill has been delivering online AutoCAD .NET training. The training has received very positive feedback from attendees. Recordings of most of the sessions are now (or will soon be) available from our online API webcast archive (which is also accessible via http://autodesk.com/apitraining –> Webcast Archive). You’ll notice that the recordings start with session 2: we had some technical issues with the first week’s recording, but as the material for these classes is essentially the same material as that used for Wayne’s DevTV sessions (which are all linked to from this post, including... Read more →

Free online AutoCAD .NET training starting September 8th

Starting next week – and for 8 weeks – Wayne Brill, from DevTech Americas, will be delivering free online AutoCAD .NET training. To register – yes, for free – go to our API Training page and select “Schedule”, then scroll down to “AutoCAD .NET”, “English”, “Webcast”, “Sep 08 2011” and click “Register” at the far right of the item. This training is a live-delivered version of Wayne’s excellent series of DevTV sessions posted previously (with transcripts). This is likely to appeal to those of you who like knowing there’s a warm body at the other end of their webcast... Read more →

AutoCAD .NET Training DevTV: downloadable session recordings

In addition to posting the transcripts, we’ve now posted recordings of the recent DevTV series on AutoCAD .NET for you to download and watch. You’ll find them on the AutoCAD .NET Developer Center, under the Samples and Documentation section (see the image on the right, if you have trouble finding them). If you’d prefer to watch them online, here are direct links to the sessions: Introduction and Sessions Overview Getting Started User Input Database Fundamentals Database Events, PaletteSet Dictionaries, Containers, Type Identification, Casting InputPoint Monitor Jigs User Interface elements We hope you’ve found these sessions useful. We’d certainly appreciate... Read more →

AutoCAD .NET Training DevTV Session 8: User Interface elements

Another Friday, another installment of Wayne Brill’s AutoCAD .NET training DevTV series (to complement those sessions from previous weeks). Today’s session is focused user-interface elements such as the .NET attributes for exposing commands and optimizing loading, adding your own tab to the options dialog and implementing drag & drop. 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 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 5: Dictionaries, Containers, Type Identification, Casting

This post was queued up for Friday, but a technical issue (i.e. probably user error) prevented it from going out. So here we are on Sunday, instead, for another installment of Wayne Brill’s AutoCAD .NET training DevTV series (to complement those from previous weeks). Today’s session is focused on working with dictionaries and other types of container, as well as using runtime type identification and casting. 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 →

AutoCAD .NET Training DevTV Session 3: Database Fundamentals

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 fundamentals of AutoCAD’s drawing database. 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 2: User Interaction – User Input

It’s Friday, which means it’s time for the next installment of Wayne Brill’s AutoCAD .NET training DevTV series (as mentioned in last Friday’s post). Today’s session is focused on user interaction and user input. 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 →

New self-paced AutoCAD .NET training material

Wayne Brill, a member of the DevTech Americas team, has been beavering away on a new set of training material for AutoCAD .NET. This material is now live on the AutoCAD Developer Center (the image on the right should help you locate the link). This new material contains information on the following topics: Overview of .NET Plugin Basics User Interaction Database fundamentals Dictionaries User Interface Events InputPoint Monitor Jigs To accompany this material, Wayne has also recorded a set of DevTV sessions, which I’ll be serialising over the coming weeks. Here are links to the introduction and the first,... Read more →

New APIs in AutoCAD 2012

As you may have seen – including over at Shaan’s blog – the 2012 family of our products has now been announced. Stephen Preston, our DevTech Americas Manager, has recorded a DevTV session on the new APIs in AutoCAD 2012. This material was presented during our recent Developer Days tour, attended by ADN members around the world. AutoCAD 2012 – New APIs View Download (17.2MB) Samples (133KB) Highlights & topics covered: Migration steps New APIs Associative Array API Multi-mode Grip API ResetTimes VisibilityOverrule BlockTableRecord.SetIsFromOverlayReference acdbConvertAcDbCurveToGelibCurve acdbConvertGelibCurveToAcDbCurve acdbAssignGelibCurveToAcDbCurve Autoloader Simplified plugin deployment AutoCAD for Mac I’ll definitely be following up... Read more →

Some content from AU 2010

As many of you may now be aware, much of the content recorded at this year’s Autodesk University is now available on the AU website. You’ll find the recording of my AU Virtual session, “Getting to Know the AutoCAD® Plug-ins of the Month”, as well as material from the two physical sessions I presented, “Point Clouds on a Shoestring” and “Integrate F# into Your C# or VB.NET Application for an 8x Performance Boost”. In fact, much to my surprise, the “Point Clouds on a Shoestring” session (which turned out to be my highest-rated session) ended up being recorded, and... Read more →

DevTV on AutoCAD 2011’s Associative Surfaces API

In preparation for his upcoming AUv session, Philippe Leefsma – from our DevTech team in Europe – has recorded a DevTV all about the Associative Surfaces API introduced in AutoCAD 2011. Philippe covers three main topics in this interesting session: The Associative Framework Associative Surfaces Nurbs Surfaces DevTV: AutoCAD 2011 Surfaces API view download (82.3MB) Enjoy! :-) Read more →

More translated AutoCAD VBA to VB.NET Migration DevTVs

In this previous post I mentioned a couple of additional translations of the VBA migration DevTV that were in progress. Here is an updated list of the various ones we now have available, including links to German, Spanish and Japanese versions: English view download (44.7 MB) Chinese view download (88.9 MB) French view download (39 MB) Portuguese view download (80.3 MB) Russian view download (39.3 MB) German view download (42.4 MB) Spanish view download (52.9 MB) Japanese MP4 download (66.9 MB) WMV download (78.5 MB) A big thanks to Augusto Gonçalves, Jeremy Tammik, Shigekazu Saito and Katsuaki Takamizawa for... Read more →

Translated AutoCAD VBA to VB.NET Migration DevTVs

To help people who don’t master English with their efforts to migrate their code from VBA to VB.NET, my team has been busy translating our existing AutoCAD VBA to VB.NET Migration Basics DevTV session into other languages. Here are the languages we have, so far (including an updated English version): English view download (44.7 MB) Chinese view download (88.9 MB) French view download (39 MB) Portuguese view download (80.3 MB) Russian view download (39.3 MB) A big thanks to Augusto Gonçalves, Xiaodong Liang, Philippe Leefsma and Marat Mirgaleev for their hard work on these sessions. German and Spanish versions... Read more →

Updated DevTV: AutoCAD VBA to VB.NET Migration Basics

After one update to the content he originally posted, Stephen Preston has handed the reigns for this DevTV across to Augusto Gonçalves, a São Paulo-based member of our DevTech Americas team. Augusto presented his work to rave reviews at AU 2009, and has now updated the online DevTV content. I’ve gone ahead and updated the original post to point to this new content, but here are the links, for your convenience: AutoCAD VBA to VB.NET Migration Basics view download (44.7 Mb) Aside from upgrading the presenter (sorry, Stephen – I couldn’t resist ;-) we’ve made some additional enhancements in... Read more →

First Portuguese DevTV session: Introdução à Programação AutoCAD.NET

We’ve been working on translating several of our DevTV sessions, and our first Portuguese DevTV is now ready for consumption. :-) A member of our DevTech Americas team based in São Paulo, Augusto Gonçalves, created this session based on Fenton Webb’s original (which you can get to from this previous post). Augusto translated the slides into Brazilian Portuguese, and provided his own voice-over for these and for Fenton’s demonstrations. Augusto tells me that the content should also be understandable for Portuguese speakers from elsewhere (Portugal, for instance :-). DevTV: Introdução à Programação AutoCAD.NET view download (172 Mb) A big... Read more →

Updated DevTV: AutoCAD VBA to .NET Migration Basics

Stephen Preston has updated his “AutoCAD VBA to .NET Migration Basics” DevTV session. I’ve updated the links in this previous post to point to the updated DevTV, as the original recording is likely to disappear during the coming days. Here’s an update from Stephen on what’s new in this version: New features of the migration tool: Automatically adds ‘ObjectDBX’ Type Library to created VB6 project file to ensure Autodesk.AutoCAD.Interop.Common classes are correctly identified (previously these came in as Autodesk.AutoCAD.Interop) Extra functionality to post-process your VB Express project for you: - Adds F5 startup application - Adds references to acmgd... Read more →

DevTV: AutoCAD VBA to .NET Migration Basics

As mentioned in a comment on a recent post, Stephen Preston, our DevTech Americas Manager, has put together a useful tool and accompanying DevTV session to help people migrate their VBA code to VB.NET. The resultant code uses COM Interop to call into AutoCAD. AutoCAD VBA to .NET Migration Basics view download (44.3 Mb) Stephen considers this presentation, and the migration tool itself, to be in draft form. If you have feedback, please do send Stephen an email. Read more →