Customization

Watching a drawing magically appear before your eyes can be quite pleasing. Especially if you wrote the program that makes the magic happen. This time we are going to look at the Visual LISP® entity data list, the primary tool used in making magic of that kind. Once you understand the entity data list and see how easy it is to exploit, you are well on your way to creating applications that magically create drawings given just the simplest of input.

Now that summer is almost over, it’s time to get back to work with AutoCAD® software. This month we first look at Shademode options in AutoCAD 2000, 2002 and 2004. For 3D or solids work, the Shademode options can be your best friend. Second, we look at a Visual LISP® routine that makes activating the various Shademode options easier.

This month we’ll keep it simple—and hopefully useful—with a LISP macro that toggles the function of the middle button on a three-button mouse. In straight-out-of-the-box AutoCAD® software that button activates the PAN command. With this handy, timesaving feature, you can press-and-pan quickly.

In this article, you learn how design and start programming an application. A good program requires structure, and a proper design saves you time in the long run.

In this edition we look at how you can manipulate attributes using Visual LISP®.

Many AutoCAD commands now provide this right-click capability to respond to prompts. They are also called context menus since their content is dependant upon the particular command in progress.

This time out, we are going to revisit basic AutoCAD® menu customization. You’ll learn how to add a relatively simple AutoLISP® macro to the Draw drop-down menu. Along the way, however, you’ll also learn how to load an AutoLISP routine on an on-demand or as-needed basis.

In this article you will learn to navigate, edit, and delete records in a database.

In this article, you will learn how to use—from within Visual LISP®—some of the ActiveX tools built into AutoCAD® software.

Use the QSELECT command—first introduced in AutoCAD® 2000—to specify object-filtering criteria and how you want AutoCAD to create a selection set from those criteria.

This article is the second in a series on integrating the programming power of AutoCAD® VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) with the functionality found in other Windows applications—specifically, Microsoft® Access. In the first segment, we discussed what is possible in such integrated applications; now it’s time to examine how it’s possible.

Toolbars are handy things and time-savers in and of themselves—except when they take up too much space in the drawing editor window and you’re constantly turning them on and off (hiding them) to get on with your work.

This article is the first in a series on integrating the programming power of AutoCAD VBA with the functionality found in other Windows applications—specifically, Microsoft Access.

Last time we developed an AutoLISP® function that performed a Zoom Extents plus—that is, it issued a Zoom Extents command and then zoomed a bit further out. This month you will incorporate the equivalent of this AutoLISP macro into the AutoCAD menu system.

Wouldn't it be handy if the ZOOM EXTENTS zoomed to the extents and then just a little further out, leaving a narrow border at either the sides or top and bottom for more zooming?

Learn how to perform a frequently used command sequences in only two or three keystrokes with short, easy to learn LISP macros.

Now we will add to our knowledge of LISP and menu macros by constructing a macro that will create solid pyramids easily and quickly.

In this tutorial, we'll take a look at two more methods of snapping to the midpoint between two other points.

This month we're going to explore how the name tags associated with menu macros can be used to customize AutoCAD®.

Now that we've learned how to build toolbars, we're going to look at something completely different in this installment—complex linetypes.

In this lesson we're going to construct a LISP macro that manipulates the AutoCAD® cursorsize system variable, which controls cursor size, so that you can quickly toggle between a small and large cursor on-screen.

Learn how to create more complicated macros by combining menu macro language with LISP expressions.

Last time we built two tools that adjusted the screen cursor either up or down in size in 5 percent increments. This month we'll add one more tool to the toolbar—one to increase or decrease the size of the screen cursor by a user-defined amount.

This month we'll add two more tools to the toolbar—one to increase the cursor size in 5 percent increments, the other to decrease it in 5 percent increments.

In this lesson, we're going to continue building a new toolbar.

We're going to continue learning about macros, but this time out we'll direct our attention to building a toolbar.

We're returning to classic customization this month. We'll write an AutoLISP macro that accomplishes a couple of tasks with a minimum of keystrokes—increasing your efficiency.

This lesson will show you how to construct a macro that adds a new AutoCAD® command to your program.

We are all familiar with the standard Midpoint Object Snap—it latches on to the midpoint of a line, much as the Endpoint Osnap finds a line's endpoint. These are very handy and frequently used Osnap modes. But how about the midpoint between two points? Let's build one.

Learn how AutoLISP determines the value of an atom or list through the process of evaluation.

In this lesson, we will examine some data manipulation functions and develop a simple new AutoLISP command that freezes all layers.

In this lesson, we'll examine some AutoLISP data types.

In this lesson you will view the behavior of global and local variables using some of the debugging features and tools found in Visual LISP®.

In this lesson you will continue your exploration of conditional branching, and will take a look at some options for loading your routines.

In this lesson we will continue exploring one of the most useful and powerful features of AutoLISP—the ability to define new AutoCAD commands.

Now that you have some of the basics behind you, explore the function of variables in greater depth in this tutorial.

Learn the basic elements of AutoLISP in this first installment of a fourteen-part series.

This lesson will introduce you to the use of conditional branching in your programs.

This lesson will show you how to incorporate default values in your commands.

This lesson presents three new AutoLISP functions: Fix, Getdist, and Getpoint.

In this lesson you will begin exploring the ability to define your own AutoLISP functions and AutoCAD commands.

Continue your study of conditional branching by taking a look at the COND function.

So far in this series you have learned about AutoLISP data types, function definitions, function arguments and variables. It is now time to take what you have learned and actually write a new command.

I recently received a request from a reader to outline the use of AutoCAD selection set filters when coding in VBA.

If you've been following along with VBA master dave espinos-aguilar since the beginning of this series, odds are you're almost a master yourself. Almost, but not quite. Join dave for the sixth and final installment of Integrating VBA with Microsoft Excel.

In this segment, we'll examine two sample applications developed to query drawing data and report findings in spreadsheet format, including the reporting of layer-entity counts using spreadsheet graphics, and we'll examine a truly powerful utility that can externalize data by using a spreadsheet row as an entity ATTRIBUTE substitute.

In this segment, we focus on pulling information from a preexisting Excel spreadsheet into the AutoCAD VBA environment.

In this third session we discuss how to port formatted data from AutoCAD VBA to Excel worksheets.

This article is the second in a series on integrating the programming power of AutoCAD® VBA with the functionality found in other Windows applications—specifically, Microsoft® Excel.

This article is the first in a series on integrating the programming power of AutoCAD® VBA with the functionality found in other Windows applications—specifically, Microsoft Excel.

A project provides a mechanism for optimizing programs to make them run faster and also gives you control over who can access the code underlying the specific programs you've created in Visual LISP. That means your programs can't be tampered with. We're going to look at these project properties in more depth in this article.

Beginner and veteran AutoLISP programmers alike ask these same questions: What is a Visual LISP Project and what does it do for me?

The Visual LISP™ integrated development environment (VLIDE) is a powerful tool for developing chunks of programs and then putting them together into larger applications.

In this article, I will set the stage with a quick introduction to the applications development sequence.

This article explores a few of the common problems programmers typically encounter when working in Visual LISP and how they can use the VLIDE to avoid them.

In a previous article we explored the concept of Visual LISP projects and how programmers use them to organize libraries of functions, compile code for faster operations, and build a single file from a collection of source files. Now we are going to look at applications that push those concepts a bit further, always keeping in mind that application creation is the ultimate destiny of a project.

This explores how to program default values into your input prompts so that they look and function just like normal AutoCAD commands.