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. πŸ™‚

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 Stephen Preston and Fenton Webb from DevTech Americas (and yes, like me they both hail from the UK, as you will most likely be able to tell from their accents), this DevCast talks about some useful programming tips (such as using smart pointers in ObjectARX), some handy development tools (such as ArxDbg, MgdDbg and Inspector) and includes some live footage taken at the recent DevLab held in San Francisco, showing off some interesting work being done by developers working with AutoCAD.

It's around 45 minutes in length, which is perhaps a touch long for a classic podcast, but there's a lot of great stuff in there: even with my admittedly shrinking attention span I sat through the entire show in one sitting.

A quick side comment… in case you're unfamiliar with Stephen's legendarily dry sense of humour, I need to point out that Stephen and Fenton were not being entirely sincere in their comments about me (I'm really not that good at football, for instance ;-).

Anyway, enough with the introduction. Sit back and enjoy our first ADN DevCast, and be sure to let us know whether you like it and whether you have suggestions for future episodes.

The Stephen and Fenton Show - ADN DevCast Episode 1

You can also download this episode for offline viewing (92.8MB).

As mentioned earlier, there are some handy tools used in this episode:

All of these tools are provided "as is", bugs included.

22 responses to “The Stephen and Fenton Show: ADN DevCast Episode 1”

  1. Thanks Guys
    I'll download during my providers off-peak time πŸ™‚

    Let's hope we don't have difficulty with the accent πŸ˜€

    Regards,

  2. Really cool!

    I hope you keep doing this, it is a nice and relaxed way of learning ObjectARX these days.

    Cheers!

  3. All of these tools are provided "as is", bugs included.

    :-))))

  4. Hope this turns into a regular series - looking forward to the next one.

  5. This is a great way to get information out to programmers who hate reading through a lot of informatiion....

  6. Do these arx utilities work on a 64-bit machine? I haven't been able to load any of them.

  7. I don't believe anyone has yet ported Inspector to x64, MgdDbg should just work (as far as I'm aware), and in all honesty I don't know for ArxDbg: the sample doesn't have an x64 configuration in the 2010 SDK, otherwise I would have built and emailed it to you.

    Kean

  8. I tried to load the inspector in acad2010 x64, too. Without any success. This is such a great tool! Please, could anybody port this to x64? I've no experiences with ARX. I'm just stressed with porting my VBA-codes to .net. So no time to learn arx in the moment πŸ™ but still looking for a tool like inspector or dbview for acad2010 (and perhaps following releases) x64.
    Thanks alot

  9. I'm looking for an inspector running in acad2011 on a 64-Bit win7 machine. Unfortunately I'm not (yet) able to compile it with VS2010 on my own using the provided code.

    Thanks for help!

    Rolf

  10. Kean Walmsley Avatar

    Sorry for the delay in replying - I didn't get notified of this comment, for some reason. And now it's over a year later. πŸ™

    There's still no 64-bit version of Inspector, unfortunately.

    You should be able to use ArxDbg or MgdDbg (the second of which should be provided from this post in a 64-bit ready DLL, I believe).

    Kean

  11. Kean Walmsley Avatar

    Sorry - there still isn't a 64-bit port of Inspector available, that I'm aware of.

    Kean

  12. Hi Kean,

    Is there a MgdDbg for 2012 anywhere yet? I can't see it on ADN.

  13. Hi Rod,

    I don't know - if you can't find it on the site I suggest submitting a support request.

    Regards,

    Kean

  14. Hello Kean

    I loaded the Inspector and started it with AutoCAD 2011 German, Win XP Prof. 32, and it seem to work.

    But I have problem with the size of the window. I only has a size of approx. 6 x 15 cm and I can not increase it. On the other size I can decrease the size of the "inner window": The "Inspector window" stays unchanged, with a caption and a grey area, and the "Data window" (with two horizontal scroll bars) becomes smaller and smaller ..
    imageshack.us/photo/my-images/42/acadinspector.png/

    Bug or Feature?
    Is there a way to increase the size of the window?

    Regards

    Peter

  15. Hi Peter,

    I'm not sure what the deal is with this (I'm not a heavyweight Inspector user, myself).

    The source code is provided, of course, in case you want to play with it.

    I will pass this on to the developers of the tool, as I believe they'll be looking at it again over the coming months.

    Regards,

    Kean

  16. Hello Kean

    thanks for your reply (which I mised for the last 10 days because it was not displayed .. - sorry). The source code oversteps my knowledge, so I have to wait for an update.

    Please keep the users informed.

    Peter

  17. Hi Peter,

    I can confirm this is on our list of enhancements for a future update (as and when that happens).

    Regards,

    Kean

  18. GrΓΌezi Kean

    to you know something new? Any schedule for an update or something else?

    Peter

  19. Hello Peter,

    Sorry - still no news.

    This is one of my team's busiest parts of the year, so I wouldn't expect anything for at least the next few months.

    Regards,

    Kean

  20. OK, thanks.

    Still waiting ...

    Peter

  21. Kean,

    Updated MgdDbg source to compile for AutoCAD 2012 x86 or x64.

    Hit me back if you'd like to check it out and host it as an update to this post. That is, unless there are other links out there for an updated version.

    Repaired only compile errors, and left predicated calls alone, as long as they were compatable.

  22. Ricky,

    Thanks for that - please do send it across and I'l at least pass it on to the ADN team (assuming they haven't already got a ported version they share with people).

    Kean

Leave a Reply to Bill Woodhams Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *