Through the Interface

In case some of you out there haven't yet completed one or more of this year's API Wishlist Surveys (and thanks to all of you who have – we have already gone way past the number of responses for previous years) I thought I'd post a gentle reminder and hopefully motivate a few more people to contribute by describing how they've helped influence our API development process.

So first for the reminder: the deadline is currently at the end of this week, on July 31st, 2009. As mentioned, the response rate this year has been very strong, so we may or may not end up extending this deadline (please don't delay responding, just in case :-).

We generally communicate the results of these wishlists at our annual Developer Days conferences. We present the results in terms of a prioritised wishlist, ordered by the volume of votes for each item.

For instance, here's the "AutoCAD API wishlist" we created from the survey results in 2007:

1. .NET support for custom objects
2. Expose ObjectARX global functions to .NET
3. Integrated Workspace/Menu/Toolbar/CUI/ATC/Palette API
4. Enhanced Dynamic Block API
5. Enhanced Undo API
6. Associative Dimension API
7. .NET Property Palette API
8. Enable AutoCAD to be used as an in-place ActiveX server
9. An API for the Data Extraction feature
10. .NET Brep API
11. Permanent Object Deletion API

I've highlighted in bold the various items we addressed in the subsequent release to the survey, AutoCAD 2009.

Here's the "AutoCAD API wishlist" from last year's survey (in 2008):

1. .NET Developer's Guide
2. Expose ObjectARX global functions to .NET
3. .NET support for custom objects
4. Integrated Workspace/Menu/Toolbar/CUI/ATC/Palette API
5. Enhanced 3D solid editing API
6. Improve accuracy of AutoCAD at large coordinates
7. CUI API for Ribbon Bar
8. .NET Property Palette API
9. Access to Debug Symbols database for ObjectARX applications
10. Action Recorder export to .NET code
11. Enhanced Undo API
12. API for importing materials definitions in ATC files into AutoCAD

Once again, the items we addressed in AutoCAD 2010 are in bold.

Now I know what you're to yourselves at this point, "hold on – the availability of a .NET Developer's Guide is apparently addressed in AutoCAD 2010, but where is it?" Well, while it wasn't available when AutoCAD 2010 shipped, it is being worked on, I promise! The plan was always for it to be completed midway (more or less) during the release. So please do watch this space – I know it's very keenly awaited by the AutoCAD .NET community, and I'll be sure to let you all know as soon as it's available.

You may also be surprised to see ".NET support for custom objects" to be on the list of completed items in AutoCAD 2010. The reason for this was the introduction of the Overrules API: while it doesn't directly expose custom objects it does go a long way to addressing the core need (and in many cases surpasses the capabilities of the custom object mechanism). So we're considering that one "done" until we hear otherwise from the community. 🙂

While we don't typically manage to address all the items in the list, the feedback we receive really goes a long way to helping our Engineering teams prioritise the delivery of APIs in our products. And the more people who fill out the survey, the more weight it carries. This really is your chance to influence the availability of APIs that are important to you in your preferred Autodesk development platform. Please help us help you by taking the time to fill out one or more of the surveys.

Here are the links, once again:

• AutoCAD®
• AutoCAD® Civil 3D®
• Revit®
• Autodesk® Inventor®

[Note: in case you're interested, this year we've also decided to post the API wishlist surveys in Chinese (AutoCAD, Civil 3D, Revit, Inventor) and Japanese (AutoCAD, Revit, Inventor), as we have local language support teams in both regions who helped with the translations. I assume that if you've managed to read to the end of this post, you probably don't need the surveys localised, but anyway. ;-)]