They've been at it again. Stephen and Fenton have recorded another informative DevCast, this time on the new simplified application loading mechanism in AutoCAD 2012, the Autoloader.
I'll be following up with my own experience of using Autoloader, in due course, but this should be a great "getting started" resource.
What a godsend!!
Cant wait to start using this!
And here I thought I was going to get to add a plug-in to Autoloader. That is Autoloader for Vault.
Interesting to note that the module load order in the file appears to be read from the bottom up. Is this something typical for xml files, or just how autoloader is programmed?
Great stuff!
Is there any xsd schema available for creating the packagecontent.xml file?
Not an XML feature, but it is how autoloader is designed. The idea is to order the files so you load the DLLs on which other DLLs are dependent first (i.e. put them at the bottom of the list). Although, when I have dependencies, I tend to prefer to implement a loader DLL and just tell autoloader to load that.
There is no formal schema, but the PackageContents.xml format is documented in the AutoCAD 2012 helpfiles (as explained in the video).
I'm sorry, I must have missed that part while testing. But anyway thank you for the information. That's what I was looking for.
I've tried this with a few projects and it worked fine but I think that the "..successfully loaded.." bubble will become some kind of spam in case there are a lot those plugins available.
Is there any way to disable this?
That bubble should only display the first time AutoCAD runs after a new plug-in is installed.
Is it possible to place *.bundle inside zip with same name? Like docx and xlsx. Or it's more inspired with Apple Application bundle format.
It needs to be a folder structure, as far as I'm aware, probably as it contains executable code.
Kean
Hi Kean! Great blog! It has been very helpful!
I have a question that is related to the Autoloader, but not directly related to .NET. I saw in the video that you are loading CUIx files with the Autoloader. I have tried this and it is an awesome feature! I only have one problem... it appears that when a .bundle is loaded from the \ApplicationPlugins folder that any cuix files in that bundle are copied to the \AutoCAD 2012 - English\R18.2\enu\Support folder.
My problem is that when I edit my cuix file and replace the old version in the .bundle, it does not copy the new cuix files to the same \AutoCAD 2012 - English\R18.2\enu\Support folder when AutoCAD starts again. So it is still loading the old cuix files from the \Support folder. Is there a way around this?
Thanks for your advice!
Hi Rob,
Thanks - glad it's of help. 🙂
I'll pass this on to the team and see what they have to say.
Thanks,
Kean
Hi Rob,
We've passed this on to our Engineering team to look into.
Thanks for reporting it,
Kean
Sure... glad to help. Does it appear to be a bug, or just not working as intended.
Thanks!
I haven't looked into it, myself, although I'm led to believe it's something new in SP1. It appears to be an unintended side-effect of a fix that went into the SP.
Kean
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