2015
-
From my cubicle in the depths of the Death Star… To celebrate this Star Wars Day, why not build your own Death Star using AutoCAD and 123D Make, or script the opening crawl inside AutoCAD using F#? May the 4th be with you, always.
-
After seeing some code to create basic jigsaws in AutoCAD – and then a quick look at fabricating them using a laser cutter – in today's post we're adding a "wiggle" factor, making the shape of the tabs more unique than in the prior version of the application. This has been integrated into the existing JIG and JIGL commands, but we've also added a new command called WIGL, which applies a wiggle to the tabs of existing jigsaws (it basically checks the selection for splines with 6 fit points and runs our algorithm against those). The amount of wiggle is…
-
After introducing a rudimentary program to help build jigsaw puzzles, we needed to fabricate the design in some way. As mentioned originally, we quickly discarded the idea to 3D print it as too time-consuming and unreliable: we decided to at least investigate using a laser cutter, what I considered to be a more natural choice for this. Now I did have some experience of using the laser cutter at our local Fab Lab, but as we wanted to iterate quickly – and didn't have the fixed requirement of the larger cutting bed – we opted to use a slightly smaller…
-
Autodesk is running a series of "Answer Days", where you can get answers to your product questions directly – and hopefully in real-time – from Autodesk's development and support teams. The first is for AutoCAD and will run from 6am and 6pm Pacific. It's not just about the product, either. The ADN team will also be participating in this event, handling any questions you have around AutoCAD's APIs. To get answers during the event, it's as simple as logging into the AutoCAD Community and creating a post on the AutoCAD Answer Day board on May 7th. If you have questions…
-
Too. Much. Fun. As mentioned in the last post, a colleague came to me with a problem… for an internal team-building exercise, he needed to manufacture a circular, 60-piece jigsaw puzzle with 6 groups of 10 pieces, each of which should be roughly the same size. The pieces will also have some text engraved on them, but that's a minor detail. I searched the darkest corners of the Internet to find an online tool to generate a pattern for this, but then realised I'd spend my time more effectively by writing one myself and sharing it here. So that's what…
-
In the last post we looked at some simple JavaScript code to automate AutoCAD's UI Finder, locating a sequence of commands in the ribbon. In this post we're going to look at how to generate a more extensive list directly from AutoCAD's documentation. The first step I took was to download and install the offline help for AutoCAD 2016. This gives us a set of HTML and JavaScript files in a local folder (c:\Program Files\Autodesk\AutoCAD 2016 Help/English/Help on my system). To parse the files I ended up using some old-school UNIX commands via my OS X environment (which shares the…
-
On my flight back from Singapore I started thinking about how an app might help people discover what's new in the AutoCAD UI from release to release. This might also work for custom functionality, but that's not (currently) my main concern. I was thinking of displaying some kind of palette that cycles through the new commands and features in a release, highlighting the associated ribbon buttons, etc., using the AutoCAD help system's excellent UI Finder capability. Over the weekend I started looking at how it might work – whether it was possible to call the UI Finder from an app…
-
The countdown for Autodesk University 2015 starts with the Call for Proposals opening on April 22nd. It will remain open until May 26th. I have a few ideas for possible topics to present at this year's event… Virtual Reality using Autodesk's View & Data API Developing JavaScript applications for AutoCAD using TypeScript Processing drawings in the cloud using AutoCAD I/O They all seem to be valid topics, but we'll see if I can find the energy and motivation to submit all three. If you have an opinion on what you'd like to hear me talk about – even if you…
-
A couple of updates from our Reality Solutions team… Firstly, a new, expanded portfolio of ReCap products is now available for download. They include the newly branded ReCap 360 Ultimate – previously known as ReCap Pro. For more information head on over to this blog post. Secondly, Autodesk Memento has been updated to version 1.0.15.10. Here's what's new in this release: Live update mechanism to deliver minor updates in the future Extrude a boundary Surface Sculpt Smart selection to select planar & organic surfaces with strokes Photo validator to check for photos that will not stitch Ability to toggle between…
-
Today's my birthday, which I'm spending with a fairly intense work schedule here in Singapore. My family gave me my present early on Saturday night, before I flew out on Sunday morning. To my absolute delight, it's a Stormtrooper onesy, which I suspect is going to soon become my preferred WFH uniform. There's a reason I'm looking so happy. When I was growing up there were children who wanted to be Luke Skywalker or Han Solo during our Star Wars re-enactments. I wanted to be a Stormtrooper. Which I have no doubt says something very important about my personality. When…