I did my third and final (for now) BricsCAD Unplugged webcast about BLADE last Wednesday. Here’s the video:
Before I dig into DCL, I start with a brief description of an absolutely brilliant feature that was added to BLADE in V19. If you code in LISP, you’ll love this feature.
Then I move on to some ancient history. Did you know that we can thank the far-sightedness of some slightly renegade Autodesk OS/2 developers in the early 1990s for the dialog boxes we use today? Did you know that you could program dialog boxes for AutoCAD for Mac in 1993 but you can’t today? Can you spot the items of interest in the background?
The rest of the video is dedicated to describing DCL programming and debugging, and I explain how BLADE is the best tool for that job using examples.
If you want to watch all three of the BLADE videos in a row (that’s 1 hour 49 minutes of viewing), Matt Olding has created a YouTube playlist for this series.
It has been an absolute pleasure working with the Bricsys people in putting this series together. Torsten Moses has informed me about yet another bunch of enhancements that are coming very soon to BLADE, so maybe you haven’t heard the last from me on this subject on BricsCAD Unplugged.
As mentioned previously, In December I made a guest appearance on the BricsCAD Unplugged webcast series to discuss the LISP development environment, BLADE (YouTube link).
I made another appearance last week describing debugging using BLADE (YouTube link):
If you’re dealing with LISP code for AutoCAD and/or BricsCAD, you really should be doing it in BLADE. It’s the best development environment for AutoLISP/Visual LISP that you’re ever going to get.
I have another appearance scheduled for later today (13 February) in which among other LISPy things, I will be discussing using BLADE for DCL programming. Again, even if you’re AutoCAD-only, I believe this is worth a watch. BLADE is better for DCL programming, too.
Even if you’re AutoCAD-only and not a programmer, you might find my brief ancient history lesson of interest. Did you know that BricsCAD for Mac users can thank a far-sighted early 90s Autodesk OS/2 team for the dialog boxes they use today?
The BricsCAD Unplugged webcast broadcasts run on the Bricsys Facebook page and are then quickly transferred to YouTube. Today’s session will start at about UTC 14:15 (2:15 PM) on Wednesday, 13 February 2019 (click here for your local time)
Last night I made another guest appearance on the BricsCAD Unplugged webcast series. This time I was discussing the LISP development environment, BLADE. Here’s the video:
Bonus points will be awarded for identifying three items of interest in the background. No, not counting my dog Sunday asleep at lower left.
Despite going way over time, there was still nowhere near enough opportunity to describe the full LISPy awesomeness that BLADE represents. I am therefore scheduled to return for another two or three episodes beginning in February. In those, I’ll be doing more of a step-by-step demonstration rather than the overview and V19 new feature description I did in this episode. If you have any particular requests for what you want covered, please comment on this post.
I also showed how the tools in BLADE (e.g. the (inspector) function) are still worth having for any DWG-based CAD Manager or power user, even if you’re not a full-on LISP programmer. If you have to work out what’s going on with dodgy DWG files, you’ll want to have (inspector) in your set of tools.
The BricsCAD Unplugged webcast broadcasts run on the Bricsys Facebook page and are then quickly transferred to YouTube. This was the last episode for 2018 because of Christmas and New Year.
In September I was the special guest on the BricsCAD Unplugged episode BricsCAD Unplugged – Steve Johnson 5 surprises moving to BricsCAD. Next Wednesday I will return, this time to wield BLADE, the best thing to happen to CAD LISP in nearly 20 years. I’ll be introducing it and demonstrating a few things, including the new features that came with V19.
These live broadcasts are run on the Bricsys Facebook page and are then quickly transferred to YouTube. This broadcast will start at UTC 15:00 (3 PM) on Wednesday, 19 December 2018. Here’s that time in a few handy time zones:
Me drinking a glass of wine (parental guidance advised – alcohol consumption depicted). If you care, it’s a Shiraz (that’s Syrah if you’re American) from South Australia’s Limestone Coast region.
Total lack of coordination from everyone in raising our drinks at the end.
Thank you to the Bricsys crew for the invitation, it was a blast! If you ever want me on again, I’ll be happy to oblige.
For future reference, these live broadcasts run on the Bricsys Facebook page and are then quickly transferred to YouTube.
Well, this is a fun video for CAD geeks. The third in the BricsCAD Unplugged series of weekly webcasts, this one promotes the Bricsys 2018 conference which will be held on 23 and 24 October in London.
This one is interesting because of the people in it and some interesting news. It features Bricsys regulars Don Strimbu, Heidi Hewett, Vince Aman and Matt Olding, but also a couple of special guests. First on the scene is Robert Green (see 4:57) but the real surprise comes at 9:23 when somebody who may be familiar to you appeared in the bottom right corner:
The fun part comes when Lynn is “persuaded” with the promise of beer to turn up in London. Lynn won’t be going to AU this year (“My invitation must have got lost in the mail!”), along with quite a few others. So if you’re going to Vegas you’ll have to put up with somebody slightly less popular on stage instead.
So Bricsys 2018 in London is where all the cool people will be. Lynn and Heidi will be there and Robert will be rocking out with the Bricsys band. I might not be lead-guitarist-cool but I’ll be there too. What is said in the video about Bricsys conferences being great for meeting people is very true. Everybody’s approachable, right up to Bricsys CEO Erik De Keyser, so come up and say hello.
If you want to join us, sign up here. At the time of writing, there are just a few hours until the end of Early Bird pricing on the tickets.
In this series of posts, I’ll be providing tips that show how to do something in both AutoCAD and BricsCAD, hence A & B.
The Series
The idea behind this series is to provide useful information for several sorts of reader:
AutoCAD users.
BricsCAD users.
People in the process of transitioning from AutoCAD to BricsCAD and who need to know what to do differently (if anything).
People considering transitioning from AutoCAD to BricsCAD and who want to know about the differences and similarities.
Why might you need a polyline?
In my last post (A & B Tip 5 – polyline areas) I described different methods of finding the areas (and perimeters) enclosed by polylines. That’s all well and good, but what if the objects that enclose your area aren’t nice convenient polylines? This post will help you make some. There are other reasons you might want polylines rather than whatever you have now. These include:
You can offset a polyline in one go rather than offsetting multiple objects and then joining them together.
You can apply fillets to a whole polyline with a single pick rather than lots of them.
A polyline can be extruded to make a 3D solid (or hole).
You can use a polyline to define a path that is used to extrude or sweep another polyline to make a solid with automatically mitred corners.
You can apply a width to a polyline and override that width for individual segments.
You can use a polyline as the basis to create a region, which allows you to do various cool things such as perform boolean operations on 2D objects.
Using polylines to define a hatch boundary can be less error-prone than using individual objects.
You can locate the geometric center of a polyline with the GCE object snap.
A polyline’s linetype can be persuaded to flow around the whole polyline rather than being confined to individual segments. In some cases, this means you will see a linetype where you would otherwise see only solid lines.
Having established various uses for polylines, and assuming you already have some objects and don’t want the tedious job of drawing over them manually, what can you do? Read on.
Note: in this post, the operations are exactly the same in both AutoCAD and BricsCAD with a couple of minor exceptions that I will point out as I go along.
PEDIT Join
If you’re fortunate enough to have a series of lines, polylines and/or arcs that are connected end-to-end without overlap to exactly define the area you want, then you can use the PEDIT command’s Join option to convert those objects to a single polyline. The command sequence dates from the mid-80s and is rather convoluted:
Command: PEDIT
Select polyline or [Multiple]: [pick an object]
Object selected is not a polyline
Do you want to turn it into one? [Enter] (this only appears if you pick a line or arc)
Enter an option [Close/Join/Width/Edit vertex/Fit/Spline/Decurve/Ltype gen/Reverse/Undo]: J
Select objects: [select a bunch of objects]
Select objects: [Enter]
X segments added to polyline
Enter an option [Close/Join/Width/Edit vertex/Fit/Spline/Decurve/Ltype gen/Reverse/Undo]: [Enter]
Note that the Do you want to turn it into one? prompt can be suppresses if you set PEDITACCEPT to 1. It’s also worth noting that if the properties of the objects vary, then the properties of the first-selected object will be used for the resultant polyline.
If you do a lot of this kind of operation, then it can be made more efficient using a menu macro. Some of us even made commands in LISP to simplify matters. A few releases ago, Autodesk did that for us when it added the JOIN command. BricsCAD followed suit to maintain command compatibility. This command joins various things in various ways, and one of those ways involves creating a polyline.
JOIN
The JOIN command, when applied to the same kind of convenient end-to-end objects described above, performs the same task as PEDIT Join, but with fewer prompts. Why not use it all the time then? Because sometimes it doesn’t work (in AutoCAD, at least). See the video for an example.
Video – PEDIT Join and JOIN in AutoCAD and BricsCAD
BOUNDARY
The BOUNDARY command, unlike the joining commands above, does not require that the objects lie conveniently end-to-end. Any group of objects that form an enclosed area can be used to create a closed polyline. Also unlike the joining commands, the existing objects are not converted to a polyline. Instead, a new polyline is created on top of the existing objects. The current properties (layer, etc.) are used to create the new polyline.
Assuming you’ve set your current properties to match the objects you want to create, invoke the BOUNDARY command (short form BO). A dialog will appear. There are minor differences between the AutoCAD and BricsCAD dialogs, but nothing that need concern us here.
Just pick the button at top left and start picking inside bounded areas. When you’re finished, press Enter and you’ll be left with a bunch of closed polylines. This video shows how it’s done.
Video – BOUNDARY in AutoCAD and BricsCAD
Finally, you can cut out the dialog box altogether and go straight to picking points if you use the command-line version, -BOUNDARY (note the leading hyphen). Just enter -BO, pick pick pick, Enter and you’re done.
We’ve been here before, so this shouldn’t shock anyone. Autodesk is red hot to employ lots of shiny new people to replace at least some of the old ones that were discarded a while back.
As a free service to Autodesk, I offer this work-for-us video for your enjoyment:
An example of the sort of attitude required from employees who want to stay around can be found at 0:37. Nice!
Sofoco (Australia) and CAD Concepts (New Zealand) recently ran a series of seminars throughout Australasia demonstrating BricsCAD. I attended the last of these in Brisbane on April 19 and gave a presentation about BricsCAD’s LISP, with reference to AutoCAD compatibility and the tools available to CAD Managers and developers, including BLADE. The talk was aimed at anybody who is writing or maintaining LISP code for AutoCAD or BricsCAD.
I had the just-before-lunch slot, which is never desirable for a presenter. People are dozing off and/or bursting to go to the toilet, and time adjustments have to be made if earlier presentations run over. I started 10 minutes late and therefore had to remove the demonstration part of the presentation on the fly, but I had planned to allow for that eventuality. It’s been a while since I have presented like this before an audience so I was a bit rusty and it wasn’t as free-flowing as I would have liked. Too many ‘erms’!
Steve’s invisible accordion is impressively large
I did manage to keep the whole audience in their seats until the end, though, so that’s something. Maybe the fact that I was waving a sword around had something to do with it.
Here’s my video, which is 21 minutes long. The sound is a bit muffled and my accent is Australian, so you might want to turn on subtitles using the CC option in the YouTube player.
Disclosure: the organisers covered part of my expenses.
I intend to produce a few videos containing tips, tutorials, product comparisons and the like. I’ve set up a cad nauseam YouTube channel, but don’t bother visiting it yet because it’s empty.
One of the things I need to do for these videos make sure I’m capturing the screen at an appropriate resolution. I knocked up a bit of Visual LISP to take care of this task quickly and accurately, and you might as well have it. It’s a simple routine that allows you to accurately size either the main AutoCAD application window or the current document window (drawing area) within the main window.
The file is WindowSize.lsp. It should work in all full AutoCAD releases (not counting LT and AutoCAD for Mac) and AutoCAD-based verticals from 2000 on.
It works in recent BricsCAD releases (except the free and LISPless BricsCAD Shape). I’ve only tested it in Windows, but it should also work in the Mac and Linux versions due to the high degree of LISP compatibility provided even across platforms. It also works in ZWCAD 2018 for the main application window, but don’t use it on the document window because that doesn’t work.
Download it, put it in a location of your choice and load it into your CAD application (for example by dragging and dropping it from Explorer onto the drawing window).
Note: In AutoCAD 2014 and later, loading any LISP or other executable file may result in a warning depending on the release, the security settings, whether the file is located in one of AutoCAD’s trusted locations, and whether the file is digitally signed. I’ve digitally signed the file to reduce the incidence of warnings, but you could still see something like this:
The verified publisher should be cad nauseam as shown above. If you pick Always Load then you shouldn’t see the warning again for this file or any others signed by cad nauseam. Feel free to edit the file for your own needs, but if you do the signature will become invalid and you’ll be warned again when loading the file.
Once it’s loaded, enter the command WindowSize. The prompt sequence goes like this:
Command: WINDOWSIZE
Window to size [Application/Document] :
Width in pixels <1280>:
Height in pixels <720>:
The other obvious internal candidate, Amar Hanspal, has decided to leave the company. Resigned on the spot, so I’m told. As the financial rewards for winning the CEO race are akin to winning the lottery, coming second must have been a major disappointment to product guy Amar, who I first met when he was helping to drive the hugely successful Release 14 program. Best wishes to Amar for the future and congratulations to Andrew.
In this welcome video, Andrew talks a lot about products; he seems to be trying to shake off the “marketing guy” image.
Unsurprisingly, he makes it clear that he’s still very keen on the troubledcloud and subscription strategies he has been instrumental in pushing within Autodesk. Expect no respite there, then.
Andrew wants to hear from you, though:
And to our partners and our customers, I’m looking forward to listening to all of you as well, and understanding what you love and what you would like to improve about Autodesk.
I know Andrew reads this blog, so go ahead and let him know what you love and what you would like to improve.
As a follow-up to the Pixel Fondue video I posted about earlier, Greg from Pixel Fondue conducted a follow-up interview with Teresa Anania, Autodesk’s Senior Director, Subscription Success.
Greg and I asked for your questions for Teresa and I passed on several of my own to him. A word of warning: don’t do as I did and watch through all 54 minutes waiting increasingly impatiently for those questions to come up. They don’t. Anyway, thanks to Greg for conducting this interview and to Teresa for participating.
Greg has now posted the video. Here’s the TL;DW (too long; didn’t watch) version:
Greg came up with some suggestions for making subscription more attractive (mainly to entertainment and media customers) and Teresa seemed open to those suggestions.
There was a rehash of the pricing information we already had a couple of months ago using the same figures Teresa provided in this blog post.
The one new piece of information was that somebody who switches from maintenance to subscription will be able to retain access to all prior versions held during perpetual license ownership. This could be interpreted in several different ways and it wasn’t clarified, so I guess we’ll have to wait for something in writing.
Despite what Teresa has apparently told some customers on the phone, there was no mention of a less unattractivesubscription offer that involves keeping your perpetual license. Indeed, Teresa made it clear that trading in your perpetual license was very much still part of the deal.
Future costs for maintenance and subscription were as vague as ever but Teresa thinks it’s pretty impressive that Autodesk put out three years of pricing when asking customers to make a decision with decades-long implications.
Teresa wants you to give Autodesk a year to prove how wonderful subscription will be, and is very confident that subscription is for “the greater good”. (Andrew Anagnost also did the “give us a year” thing on Twitter so I guess we’ll see that theme repeated in an attempt to buy more time).
She has solemnly stated that Autodesk is never going to gouge its customers and wants to start building better relationships.
Since then Teresa Anania (Teresa from the letter) has contacted me and has agreed to do a pixelfondue livestream and answer some questions people may have. So…if you want to ask Teresa something directly post your question here and I will send it to her. I obviously can’t guarantee that I will ask (or she will answer) all questions. Teresa is (to her credit) reaching out to customers in a more personal way here – and maybe we can help her understand our feelings about AD’s move to subscription, especially how it pertains to current license holders.
Teresa Anania is Autodesk’s Senior Director, Subscription Success. It is indeed commendable that Teresa is prepared to step out of the Autodesk PR safe zone and field questions and comments from real people in an environment outside her control.
If you want to ask Teresa a question, hop over Autodesk forum and reply to Greg’s post. I’ll let Greg know about this post here too, so if you reply here he should see it.
In this video starting at 42:21, Greg from Pixel Fondue had a few words to say about Autodesk’s attempt to price-force perpetual license owners onto subscription (rental). I think he captures the current Autodesk customer mood quite nicely.
Here are some of the highlights from Greg and others:
45:20 – The only thing they forgot to attach to this was the head of a horse.
46:54 – If they didn’t think it was a tough sell, they wouldn’t have written a 2000 word essay…
49:14 – This is a trade-in, and they’re looking to take this [Entertainment Creation Suite]. So I give you this, this $12,000 investment … I give it back to you, plus like another $1,000 … and you give me the exact same thing. Except I no longer own it.
51:02 – Hi! Give us your thing you bought from us, we’ll rent it back to you… dumbass!
58:49 – It’s OK to be pissed, and Autodesk needs to know that people are pissed. So, Teresa, people are pissed. That’s a bullshit letter. Be honest with us.
If you’re hoping the change at the top of Autodesk is going to result in a change to the all-rental business model, abandon that hope now. In this nodding-heavy video, temporary co-CEOs Amar Hanspal (product guy) and Andrew “Baked Beans” Anagnost (marketing guy) confirm it’s full steam ahead. Not unexpected, really.
If either of these guys is selected as CEO (my money’s on Amar), the rental push will continue. Don’t expect to be saved by an incoming CEO, either. The Autodesk board won’t appoint a non-believer.
If you won’t abandon your perpetual licenses, you’ll need to abandon Autodesk.
Thanks to Hans Lammerts on Twitter for pointing out this amusingly cringeworthy AutoCAD 360 YouTube ad:
The guy spilling his coffee and falling over reminds me of the people in those infomercials that can never get the simplest things right:
https://youtu.be/3eMCURWpNAg
OK, so the ad’s bad, but how’s the product? I had a look for myself at the browser version of AutoCAD 360, which is the current name for what has been Visual Tau, Project Butterfly and AutoCAD WS in previous iterations dating back before Autodesk’s acquisition of the Israeli technology in 2009.
It’s a while since I tried it, so I was interested to see the progress that had been made. After all, CAD in the Cloud has been Autodesk’s focus for a long time now, and as this is likely the first product people try out, you’d expect it to be pretty dazzlingly good after all those years of development, right?
Interestingly, it’s still called a Beta, which hardly inspires confidence. Nevertheless, it didn’t misbehave for me, at least to begin with. It didn’t do very much at all for me, though.
On opening a very simple small 2D drawing, the first thing I noticed was the white background. As the drawing contained yellow text, that was no good so I looked for the settings to change the background to black. Couldn’t find any settings. I guess I didn’t really want to read that text anyway.
Nevertheless, I could zoom and pan around OK with tolerable performance. When I tried to select some objects to edit them, nothing happened. I looked around for buttons to press to do things. There was very little to see, and nothing I could find for doing anything much other than redlining over the top of what’s already there.
The second time I tried to open the same drawing, it just hung there, displaying a blue propeller thingy:
I gave up and tried again. This time, things were different! It locked slightly differently:
Now I see why it’s still called Beta.
To be fair, it hasn’t locked like this for me in the past so maybe it’s a one-off. Assuming it’s working, it’s a useful enough viewer. It has some limited markup functionality. That’s it. It’s free, and you get what you pay for.
Calling it AutoCAD 360 is highly dubious. It’s not AutoCAD or anything remotely close to it. It’s not even CAD. It’s a simple online product with capabilities that fall well short of the weakest CAD application back in the bad old days, when people could only dream of something as advanced as the dumb guy’s Nokia in the embarrassing Autodesk 360 ad.
There are also mobile versions of the software for iOS and Android. Haven’t tried them recently, but when I did they were acceptable viewers. Apparently you can pay for versions that actually let you do things. Go for it if you feel confident in Autodesk’s ability to provide a quality product. Me, I’m out.
…for some things. The other day, I amused myself by creating a video using a site called Xtranormal. You’ve probably seen 3D cartoon-like videos of people with stilted voices. It’s done by signing up for a free account, choosing a background and some characters, then typing in your script. This is converted, generally fairly successfully, to spoken words. The characters lip-sync to your script, you publish the video and you’re done. If you have a YouTube account, the site will upload the video for you. Video creation service provided on line, video hosting and viewing service provided on line. No problem.
Here it is; this blog’s readership is not the intended audience, so you probably won’t find it particularly amusing.
Could the video creation have been done using a standalone application rather than doing it on line? Absolutely. It may well have been quicker on my PC, but using this SaaS was fine. It performed well enough to be usable. Somebody taking my work isn’t an issue, as I always intended to show it publicly anyway. The worst that can happen is that my email address is abused, but it’s easy to make a throwaway email address.
I think that for this trivial recreational task, SaaS technology was absolutely appropriate. If the site had been unavailable or my Internet connection had been down, it wouldn’t have really mattered. If YouTube goes down for an hour and people can’t view my video, so what? If YouTube closes my account and makes all my videos unavailable, that would be more annoying but still not fatal.
So, full steam ahead for CAD on the Cloud, then? Er, no. It has yet to be shown that the Cloud is the appropriate technology for that particular use. I’m sure it will be, for some specialist niche requirements. But all of it? A complete fully-functional CAD application provided on a SaaS basis as an appropriate use of technology? Not any time soon. Maybe one day, but then again, maybe not. There will have to be real, demonstrated benefits that outweigh the concerns. The CAD Cloud vendors are going to have to go well beyond the “Wow! This is cool!” phase first, and start engaging the CAD community in serious discussion about the genuine concerns that customers have about the technology. Ignoring those concerns won’t make them go away.
I have been away in Sydney for a while, attending the Australian Fencing Championships. I fenced in five events with uneven success (I came 52nd out of 70 in the Open Foil, for example), but a few things made me happy. First, I was able to fence for Western Australia in the Team Foil event as captain of the WA ‘B’ team, which put up a decent performance in going down to a strong ACT ‘A’ team. Next, I came 6th in the Veteran Foil; down from last year’s 2nd, but quite respectable given the strength of the field.
The event I was really concentrating on, the one in which I most wanted to do well, was the Veteran Sabre. I fenced pretty well through the pools and direct elimination bouts and got through to the final. There, I faced an opponent who had beaten everybody else that day, and I had trouble maintaining the same level of performance. Who would come through to be crowned national champion for 2011? Watch the video (YouTube, 3:02 long) of the Veteran Men’s Sabre Final to find out:
I’m on the left. If a red light goes on, I’ve hit him. If he hits me, it’s a green light. If both lights go on, we’ve both hit each other within 120 milliseconds and the referee awards the hit based on right-of-way rules. Veteran direct elimination bouts are fought until one fencer scores ten hits. Link to results.
It’s about time I posted about something other than the Cloud, or even CAD.
Every year, there are four national-level fencing competitions in Australia. As they are almost all held on the other side of the continent, I don’t get to compete in them as often as I’d like. However, a couple of months ago I did have the opportunity to compete in the third of these competitions for 2011, held this year in Canberra.
This was very special to me because my mother and sister were in the audience and it was the first time either of them had ever seen me fence. It was also special because my sabre coach, Frank Kocsis, flew out to be with me and his other students. Frank has taken only two years to move me from complete sabre novicehood to being competitive at national level, particularly in the veteran (over-40) events.
This is not an entirely Cloud-free post, because this video of me fencing in the Veteran Men’s Sabre Semi-Final (2:49 long) is hosted on YouTube:
I’m on the right. If a green light goes on, I’ve hit him. If he hits me, it’s a red light. If both lights go on, we’ve both hit each other within 120 milliseconds and the referee awards the hit based on right-of-way rules. Veteran direct elimination bouts (like this semi-final) are fought until one fencer scores ten hits.
If you want to see how the winner of the semi-final did, here is the Final (4:46).
