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Monday, August 17, 2009

Isolated Topics for Advanced Beginners

2010/02/08:
ADDED: AutoLISP Coding Stlye-Link
CHANGED: Title
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AutoLISP Coding Style (Reini Urban's AutoLISP FAQ) !should know!
Some links in this article are broken, but the information available is still useful.

ACET Functions at afralisp.net or
ACET Functions at jtbworld.com (zip -> pdf) !should know!
The documentation of a part of the ACET-functions (ACET = AutoCad Express Tools), which are NOT documented in the developer's help file (except for pityful 5 ones and at least 3 of those should really be listed under "Externally Defined Commands"). I will write more about the ACET-functions later on under the section "The ACET-functions in more detail". (In case the AfraLisp.net site gets display incorrectly in FireFox 3.5 or higher then look here.)

DOSLib - "The" AutoLISP Windows OS-extension !should know!
"DOSLib, is a library of AutoLISP-callable functions that provides a variety of Windows operating system capabilities to AutoCAD." [quote from the linked site] It is NOT an integral part of AutoLISP or AutoCAD. You have to download it from this third party website and intall it separatly. For the download you only have to fill in your e-mail address. Good thing: You can also download older version's that already work from AutoCAD R12 upwards and it's free! For those who need it's functions, it is surely worth it. (There are also a few Windows OS-functions as part AutoLISP itself as well as part of the ACET-functions (see above). These include i.e. functions working with the Windows registry, the Windows environment variables, the file system and beep sounds. For more details see the the appropriate references.)

Some of the next few links take you to freely downloadable course material of former Autodesk University (AU) courses. For downloading you have to register for free, which is IMHO well worth it.

AutoLISP Editor: It Should be Easy...It Is! (AU material)
"Checking Brackets; Watching Variables; Watching programs execute; Finding errors; Naming conventions" [quote from the linked site]

AutoLISP Level Two: Beyond the Crash Course (AU material)
"Working with selection sets; set filtering; entity modification; user input qualification; error handlers; and system variable manipulation. [...] Valuable tips to help you debug your code fast. [...] Prerequisites: [...] You should have attended 'The AutoLISP Crash Course'" [quote from the linked site] (The link to "The AutoLISP Crash Course" material is available under the section "Single Articles for Total Beginners".)

AutoLISP by Example, Part I (AU material)
"How to get information from users and the drawing; perform calculations; create transparent commands; manage and convert strings; utilize conditional functions; apply functions that loop through data; include error trapping in new commands; and maybe even take a peek at making AutoLISP interact with MS-DOS." [quote from the linked site]

AutoLISP by Example, Part II (AU material)
"Prerequisite: you must take AutoLISP by Example, Part I" [quote from the linked site]

Good Habits for Coding in Visual LISP (AU material)
"Identifying functions for use as toolbox routines; Autoloading beyond (autoload); Tools for getting input and handling errors; Storing data in a drawing; Accessing unopened drawings" [quote from the linked site]

LISP: Advance Yourself Beyond A Casual Programmer (AU material)
"Using advanced functions like Mapcar, Lambda, Apply,etc.; Using the Visual Lisp extensions and the development environment more than just a fancy text editor; Creating reactors-based programs that run automatically as your drawing changes; Harnessing the power of Visual Basic in Lisp; Mastering the art of recursive programming" [quote from the linked site]

Error Trapping and Good Programming Practices (pdf)
"... learn to apply some simple concepts to produce friendly, courteous AutoLISP programs." [quote from the linked document]

OpenDCL: DCL Has Evolved! (AU material)
"Creating stunning dialogs/forms (GUI) for your AutoLISP applications; Creating a tool palette like front end that interacts with your AutoLISP code; Easily adding a configuration tab to the AutoCAD Options dialog; Securely embedding your GUI into a VLX file" [quote from the linked site]

AutoCAD Hacker’s Handbook (incl. ActiveX) (pdf)
"Step into the mind of an Express Tools programmer and learn his favorite tricks." "How to display a dialog version of a command from lisp; Tips for Entity creation with Lisp; Error handling with the Express Tools error handler; Some common programming mistakes; Lisp performance tips; Tips for optimizing list processing; Error trapping with vl-catch-all-apply ...How to catch a lisp error and continue processing; How to call VBA/ActiveX functions from lisp; Tips for getting VBA/ActiveX API information; Methods of storing data so that is can accessed across drawings and/or across AutoCAD sessions" [quotes from the linked document]

Visual LISP: Using AutoCAD [ActiveX] Automation
"How to use — from within Visual LISP — some of the ActiveX tools built into AutoCAD software." [quote from the linked site]

A Few Basic AutoLISP Samples (incl. ActiveX) by John Prentice
Basic Command Function; Degrees to radians; Entity Data Extract; Erase All (Except); Intersection Solid; List Add; List Remove; Mid-Point Polar; Mid-Point XY; Nearest Polar; Radians to Degrees; Random Function; Setup Function; VLA Conversion; VLA Solid Volume; VLA Centroid; VLA Radius of Gyration; VLA Solid Interference; VLA Solid Bounding Box

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