AU
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The organizers of AU are asking people to vote on the sessions they'd most like to attend at this year's conference. The sessions being presented by my team are not part of that list, so here they are, in case any of you completing the survey were wondering about them. I should mention that at this stage the below sessions are still subject to change. Platforms (AutoCAD, RealDWG, AutoCAD OEM, DWF) Product API Title AutoCAD All AutoCAD APIs: The Right Tool for the Job AutoCAD .NET AutoCAD .NET Basics AutoCAD .NET AutoCAD .NET: A Tour AutoCAD .NET AutoCAD .NET: Developing…
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The ADN team delivered around 50 classes at AU 2007, and we're currently planning on delivering around the same number at AU 2008. (A quick note on the classes I'll be delivering: I'm planning to deliver a class on programming AutoCAD with F#, as well as delivering the "There's more to DWG than AutoCAD®" and "Enriching your DWF™" classes from last year.) Joseph Wurcher, manager of AU Program Development and author of BLAUG, asked me to pass on the below "last call for presenters" to this blog's readership. Two words: submissions deadline. If you're considering joining our outstanding slate of…
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I'm sat here at McCarran airport, tapping in a quick post before flying off to Boston. I didn't get the chance to post on the happenings this week at AU (or about anything much else, for that matter), but many others have, so I expect that's OK. I have to say I really enjoyed this year's AU, even if I'm now feeling a little frazzled. It was a real pleasure to put so many faces to names over the course of the week, as well as to catch up with old acquaintances. I'd also like to say a quick (but…
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[This post continues from part 1 of this series. The source for the below applications is available here: DWF Toolkit application source, Design Review application source & Freewheel application source.] Mining the data with the DWF Toolkit Now we're going to look at using the DWF Toolkit – the freely available, cross platform toolkit for creating and reading DWF files – to extract the "identity" and "material" metadata associated with our geometry. The DWF Toolkit is a C++ toolkit, so we have two components to our project: A C++ DLL that uses the DWF Toolkit to read a DWF, storing…
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Introduction This session focuses on technologies that can be used to view and access DWF content downstream from Autodesk's design products. Yesterday's session focused on DWG – we're going to take the model containing 3D solids that we created during that session and publish it to DWF, adding custom metadata. We can then look at how to harness this data in lightweight applications, whether to access it non-graphically or to view it. Firstly, why are we using 3D solids in this example? The choice was somewhat arbitrary – the point is really to demonstrate the ability to access properties of…
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[This post continues from part 1 and part 2 of this series.] Building a full editing product using AutoCAD OEM Now we're going to take our AutoCAD .NET module from the beginning of the session and build a complete CAD package around it. AutoCAD OEM allows you to build a custom-branded version of AutoCAD, with the subset of AutoCAD's own features and additional functionality you choose to build in. A key feature of AutoCAD OEM is its security layer, which will stop any module being loaded that has not been built in by design. By limiting its extensibility – and…
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[This post continues from the last post, which I've been back and modified slightly since it was posted.] Using the DWG Thumbnail in a simple application Thumbnail images, when they exist inside a drawing, live in a predictable place at the beginning of the file. This makes it possible for a module – such as an ActiveX control – to extract the thumbnail information when pointed at a DWG file and generate an image from it. All done without the need for RealDWG (which also does this, but with a much heavier runtime component). A number of 3rd party tools…
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[As mentioned in the last post, I'll be publishing chunks of the handouts for my AU classes via this blog over the coming weeks] Introduction This session focuses on downstream technologies that can be used to access DWG content outside of AutoCAD-based products. We're going to start by creating a basic model inside AutoCAD comprised of 3D solid objects, and then look at a simple AutoCAD .NET application to access information about those solids. We will then take the same code and build a non-graphical (in terms of geometry - it does, after all, have a GUI) application around it…
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AU BEAT is a series of interview-style podcasts held with instructors, presenters and key AU stakeholders. The series provide a valuable glimpse into the programs and activities planned for this year's AU. On the subject of AU... over the next two weeks I'm going to be heads-down preparing handout material for my AU sessions. As a taster for my two sessions (DE319-2: There's More to .DWG Than AutoCAD® & DE401-2: Enriching Your DWF™), I'm going to post the hand-out material here, too. The two sessions will dive more deeply into the material created for the recorded presentation available from this…
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Just a quick post today regarding an AU Unplugged! topic I've submitted. The proposed session is called "Developing applications for AutoCAD: best practices for using AutoCAD's APIs." Here's the description I gave for the topic: "Come along to share and learn best practices for customizing/developing with AutoCAD: discuss your choice of API technology and how best to address common development issues. Find out where best to focus your learning around AutoCAD customization." If you're interested in attending this (and other developer-oriented Autodesk University sessions), you can register for the conference at AU Online. I don't know whether the Unplugged event…