AutoCAD
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For those who have (quite understandably) not been following the story unfolding around this tool, here's a quick timeline so far. I've largely pieced this together from emails, as I don't typically tag blog updates with a date (something it seems I ought to consider starting). 12/12/12 – In response to a request from our Product Support team, the original implementation was posted to this blog. 03/28/13 – I posted an update to the original post with a minor fix to handle corrupted drawings a bit better (Update). 06/21/13 – A tool based on the (updated) code was published as…
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I received this question in a blog comment: How to determine the NurbCurve3d center between two NurbCurve3ds? I chose to interpret this in the following way: given two NurbCurve3d objects, create a NurbCurve3d that sits exactly between the two. NurbCurve3d are "AcGe" classes – which means they're non-graphical – so I've broadened the scope to deal with Splines as they have a close relationship with the NurbCurve3d class (in fact there are handy methods to convert between the two classes). Here's some more information on NURBS, for those with an interest. I've also chosen to deal with one fairly specific…
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The first post I had planned for this week was to announce the availability of an officially-supported tool based on the code in this blog post from late last year. The tool was posted to the Autodesk web-site late last week. Over the weekend, Jimmy Bergmark pointed out an issue with the tool that led to me requesting that the tool be removed, for now: for certain linetypes based on DGN linestyles, the DGNPURGE command resulted in the linetypes having missing components when the drawings were reloaded. Jimmy kindly provided a DWG that helped identify the problem: my original code…
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In the last post we took a look at how we could make use of the .obj output from a ReCap Photo model of a car to perform virtual wind tunnel analysis using the standalone version of Project Falcon, a flow simulation tool currently on Autodesk Labs. This post extends (or forks) that workflow to achieve my goal of performing virtual wind tunnel analysis on a Morgan 3 Wheeler in the AutoCAD-based version of Project Falcon. After stitching a 3D scene from photos using ReCap Photo – and exporting it to .obj – we need to bring the model into…
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Here's the thing. While it's nice to be able to capture interesting-looking models with Autodesk ReCap Photo, what we really want is an output format that's useable in other products. In my case, what I personally wanted to do was first hinted at in this post: display a model of the Morgan 3 Wheeler in a virtual wind tunnel using Project Falcon (a project on Autodesk Labs which is – at the time of writing – scheduled to run until August 30, 2013). So let's take a look at the output formats of the ReCap Photo service and see how…
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Last week I received the following question from Adam Schilling: I have enjoyed your posts on .net programming for datalinks. I have searched high and low and haven't been able to find answers or any support to help me with a small issue. My code (much of which was based off of your posts from 2007) works fine, except I cannot get it to use a different sheet from the workbook that is select. Since the option to select a specific sheet is available when adding a link manually, I would think that it would be possible to programmatically do…
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I've been beavering away in an attempt to streamline the AutoCAD-Leap Motion integration samples I posted last week. Here's the updated project. This latest set generally gets better results than the last ones, and the LEAPEXT command certainly feels more snappy and accurate. I'm still trying to find out why the controller occasionally stops seeing my fingers – it could well be down to lighting or to the fact I'm using a Plexiglas surface about the device – but I'll keep looking into it. I know it's still likely to be a month or so before most of you get…
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I mentioned a presentation I gave in Singapore a few weeks that talked about integrating Kinect and Leap Motion with AutoCAD. After the session I had a good conversation (in person and then by email) with Nagappan Nachiappan. Nagappan is a talented young software engineer working on AutoCAD's JavaScript API, but has a strong interest in HCI (his final year degree project used computer vision techniques to implement a virtual mouse that moves with your hand). Nagappan was responding to concerns I'd raised about the ergonomic impact of hovering your hand above the device. His primary question was "can the…
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I'm currently in Boston for an internal technical summit where I'll be presenting sessions on Kinect Fusion and Leap Motion (which will the sessions I've submitted - and will hopefully get accepted - for AU 2013). I arrived a day early and rented a bicycle from the hotel, taking the opportunity to cycle through the MIT and Harvard campuses (both of which are in Cambridge, where the summit is taking place) and then on to downtown Boston. It was really great being back in Boston after probably five years - it's still one of my favourite cities in the US.…
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Here's a question I received recently from Dustin Vest, who works as a PDMS administrator at Fluor: I am having a problem with Intergraph's SmartSketch dwg files it exports... I found some code on your site that got me into the blocks, but I can't seem to change the draworder of entities within the block. SmartPlant 3D exports all the symbols as blocks but with wipeouts on top of the rest of the block. Dustin provided some code that was very nearly working – it really didn't need much work to get it in shape – and has kindly allowed…