Through the Interface

Join DevDays Online to learn what’s coming with Autodesk platform technology

There’s a series of webinars starting next week that will help you get a grip on what’s coming with various Autodesk platforms, both cloud-based and desktop. It’s also a chance to catch up on some of the content that was presented at last year’s DevCons. All the below webinars start at the same time: 8am PST | 11am EST | 4pm GMT | 5pm CET. Don’t worry if that time’s inconvenient, recordings will be made available soon after the webinars are finished. Please note that while some of the sessions (the last three in the below list) require Autodesk... Read more →

A brief history of rearchitecting AutoCAD (or the importance of R13)

Over the weekend I received an email from Jürgen Becker. It came with this image, which certainly brought back memories. The email referred to our recent trip down memory lane… I read your last post and remembered a poster. Do you remember that release, it was terrible? This is one of my favourite “chat over a beer” topics, and one that seems relevant to where we are today with Fabric, so I wrote Jürgen a quick note to say that I’d reply via my blog. Here is that reply. R13 was bad, but it had to happen I joined... Read more →

AutoCAD Developer Documentation Survey 2016

The AutoCAD team is running their annual survey to better understand developers’ needs relating to documentation. Access the survey here before the end of May. Lee Ambrosius provides more information over on his blog, including some interesting data-points from last year’s survey as well as areas of the documentation that were influenced by it. Read more →

Signing your application modules for AutoCAD 2016 – Part 1

This series of posts is one I’ve been meaning to write since AutoCAD 2016 started shipping. Thankfully a number of other people have filled the void, in the meantime, so I’ve created an appendix of related posts that you can find at the bottom of each post in this series. The series is about how we’re working to improve security inside AutoCAD, and what this means for application developers. Dieter’s posts on Lynn’s blog help explain some of the background to this work, much as I’ve posted here in the past, too. Perhaps the biggest security change in AutoCAD... Read more →

AutoCAD 2016 for developers

After our quick look at AutoCAD 2016 from a user perspective, let’s now spend some time looking at the things important to developers in this latest release. Compatibility Off the bat it’s worth stating that AutoCAD 2016 is a DWG compatible release: it’s using the same file format as AutoCAD 2013, 2014 and 2015. It’s also a binary application compatible release: ObjectARX apps written for AutoCAD 2015 should work in 2016 and it’s likely that .NET apps built for AutoCAD 2014 will work, too. That said, some changes have been made to the security model for this release of... Read more →

Creating an associative fillet operation using ObjectARX

This is really cool. Fellow architect on the AutoCAD team, Jiri Kripac – who originally wrote AutoCAD’s “AModeler” facet modeler and is the driving force behind AutoCAD’s Associative Framework – has written a really interesting ObjectARX sample to perform an associative fillet between two curves. Given Jiri’s background, this is as close to a canonical sample for implementing an operation using the Associative Framework – in this case by creating a custom AcDbAssocActionBody – as you’re likely to find. Here’s a video showing this custom fillet in action, and how it can be used with parameters and expressions to... Read more →

VS2012 debugger type visualizers for ObjectARX

The C++ developers among you may remember the autoexp.dat file, which tells older versions of Visua... Read more →

Thinking about security – Part 1

We’ve been getting some interesting responses back from the AutoCAD Security Survey that has been posted over on the AutoCAD Futures beta forum. (If you haven’t already responded, we’d appreciate you taking the time to do so: it’ll probably take you less time than reading the rest of this blog post. Then please come back and finish reading this, too. ;-) The survey is intended to gauge whether the safeguards we first introduced in AutoCAD 2013 SP1 (and then further enhanced with the SECURELOAD mechanism in AutoCAD 2014) are properly understood and considered valuable. From some of the feedback... Read more →

AutoCAD 2015: calling commands

photo credit: Marcin Wichary via photopin cc As mentioned in the last post, fibers are now inactive in AutoCAD 2015 (the code paths are still there, largely for testing purposes, but should not need to be enabled for typical usage of the product). Fibers were a technology that Microsoft introduced way back when to help single document (and typically single-threaded) applications adapt more easily to the brave new world of MDI. At least that’s my recollection and understanding. They were basically a mechanism by which applications such as AutoCAD could manage their per-document state, making the relevant data current... Read more →

AutoCAD Developer Documentation Survey

Viru Aithal from the ADN team posted a link to this survey on the ADN DevBlog and asked that I post it here, too. The survey will help us determine your priorities for developer-oriented documentation, so we definitely appreciate the time you take to fill it out. [You might even find out about documentation resources of which you were previously unaware – there’s quite a list in there.] My inbox is nearly back under control after my week of holiday, so I’ll certainly be posting more during the course of the week. photo credit: splorp via photopin cc Read more →

AutoCAD API wishlist survey

Hot on the heels of my last post regarding this year’s API wishlist surveys, Stephen Preston has announced on the AutoCAD DevBlog the launch of this year’s AutoCAD API wishlist survey. The survey will remain open until June 22nd, but don’t delay – you’ll find it very quick to complete. This year’s survey has a somewhat different format: it has a number of questions dedicated to understanding your needs around AutoCAD WS and developing for the cloud. This doesn’t mean we’re no longer interested in the desktop – nothing could be further from the truth – so be sure... Read more →

Autodesk Exchange: submitting your AutoCAD application for posting

In the last post, we saw the steps involved in preparing an AutoCAD application for posting to the Autodesk Exchange store. In this post, we’ll step through the submission process. Let’s start with some basics: posting to Autodesk Exchange currently happens from within the AutoCAD product, which means you’ll need AutoCAD 2012 installed (and running) to submit your product. Step 1 – sign into (or up for and then into) Autodesk Exchange. Within AutoCAD 2012, sign in to Autodesk Exchange. If you’re not already in possession of an Autodesk ID, click on the link to create one. If you... Read more →

A simplified .NET API for accessing AutoCAD parameters and constraints

In the 2010 release, we introduced 2D geometric constraints to AutoCAD. The feature was implemented using AutoCAD’s low-level – and very powerful – Associative Framework, which has subsequently been used to implement features such as parametric surfaces in AutoCAD 2011 (more information on that here). Our initial API implementation for creating and accessing geometric constraints (which you can find out more about via the DevTV session linked to from this previous post) in many ways reflects the low-level nature of the underlying framework: it was unfortunately just a bit too complicated for most mortals to get to grips with.... 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 →

Mac Attack

Well, I’ve finally taken the plunge and ordered a MacBook Pro. I have very little experience with Apple products – other than owning an aging iPod Photo and having bought an iPod Touch for my wife – so this is quite a departure for me. I’m far from being ready to call myself “a Mac” rather than “a PC”, but if I’m to talk intelligently about working with AutoCAD for Mac then it was bound to happen, sooner or later. I ordered the 15” model with a screen and processor upgrade. I’m very curious to see how it performs.... 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 →

"AutoCAD 2011 New APIs" webcast recording

The recording of the previously announced “AutoCAD 2011 New APIs” webcast held on April 13th, 2010 is now available for download (19.8MB). We’ve also completed a much-needed restructuring of our online session information. Links to downloads of previously recorded sessions were available via our API training schedule (also available from http://autodesk.com/apitraining –> Schedule). They have now been granted their own, well-deserved page: [You’ll notice the recording of the Inventor 2011 New APIs is also live – the Revit 2011 version will be posted soon, as will the one for AutoCAD Civil 3D 2011 (once the session has been held,... Read more →

AutoCAD 2011 is now shipping

As you’re by now probably aware, the 2011 family of our products is now shipping. I’ll have lots to say on AutoCAD 2011’s new API features over the coming weeks/months, but for now here’s a quick post on the items from the most recent API Wishlist Survey that we delivered in this release (the items we’ve addressed in some way are in bold below): .NET API for Property Palette Parametric Drawing .NET API Enhanced Dynamic Block API Runtime Ribbon API enhancements Enhanced Dynamic .NET language support Improved .NET<->LISP Interop Object transparency API Enhance Visual LISP IDE Boundary tracing API... Read more →

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! :-) Read more →

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... Read more →