AutoCAD Developer Documentation Survey

[Virupaksha_aithal]

AutoCAD customization documentation team is conducting the survey on AutoCAD Developer Documentation. This survey is to collect information about your impression of the developer documentation and to determine our priorities. I hope you’ll be willing to give few minutes of your time to take the survey – the results will be used to guide the efforts of our developer documentation team.

Here is the link to the survey https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/QXNH7VQ. This survey will be active till 5/31/2016

Also, visit blog http://hyperpics.blogs.com/beyond_the_ui/2016/03/autocad-developer-documentation-survey-2016.html which lists the work done on previous developer documentation survey.

[BKSpurgeon]

Hello Viru

Thank you for the opportunity to listen to developer views.

In my opinion, the documentation is not very good. Just barely adequate. It's like passing a test with 51%. If you go to the ObjectARX managed reference guide a lot of the properties and methods are simply not explained well enough..........that summarises my stance pretty well. I can't speak for others, but it will be interesting to hear what they say.

I hope this helps. 

regards

BK

[Virupaksha_aithal]

Thanks for the feedback.

I am sure our developer documentaion team considers your feedback and take approriate steps to adress the reported issue.

Thanks again.

[_Tharwat]

Hi,

It is a very appreciated step indeed.

I hope the Help Document would go back to its former format with HTML to be able to find functions so quickly and better than going online and waiting for the browser to finishing downloading the web page besides that , if I wanted to search for another function from the same web page that is already opened, it is REALLY defficult to find unless I go back to Visual Lisp editor and start from scratch again.

I know I am talking about VLisp but also the AutoCAD .NET Developer's Guide is very important as well for me too.

Thank you. 

Tharwat

[ambrosl]

Hello BK,

All feedback is important to us.  While the goal is to eventually fix all of the short comings, we want to make sure we focus on the areas that are most commonly used first.  I appreciate you taking the time to respond to the survey, the responses from the survey are used to refine the developer documentation road map.

Thanks,

  Lee

[ambrosl]

Hello Tharwat,

Are you referring to a CHM version of the AutoLISP documentation?  Asking as there is already an offline version of the AutoLISP documentation that is available offline and is HTML format.  If you install the offline version of the AutoCAD product documentation, you can access the documentation using your default system Web browser.  The AutoLISP edocumentation can also be accessed online user your Web browser as well, you don't need to use the standard help container window.  As for the Managed .NET Developer's Guide, it is now available as a CHM file (http://bit.ly/1pxfLz8) and can be used in tangent with the documentation that is part of the ObjectARX SDK.

Thanks,

  Lee

[_Tharwat]

Hi Lee.

Thank you for your reply and I am really happy to see you posting here.

Actually after AutoCAD 2010 me and many if not all AutoCAD users and programmers have been suffering with the Help Document after AutoDesk moving it Online , and Offline document does not help at all if it is not interacting with search word as shown in the attached simple vedio recording with AutoCAD 2009.

Thank you so much.

[ambrosl]

Thanks for the short video... Just for clarification, your issue is with the loss of contextual help from the VLIDE and not the change in documentation format?  Asking since CHM is shown in the video which was the only way help could be accessed back then, but help is currently only available in HTML online/offline.

Thanks,

  Lee

[CADbloke]

RealDwg cost me US$5k and it come with ZERO C# samples and (more significantly) ZERO installer samples. Wait, let me count that value for my US$5k again ... yup, ZERO. It didn't even get the XML docs love that AutoCAD 2017 got.

Building your installer is your worst nightmare. For any guidance at all, you have to seek out the tutorial at http://adndevblog.typepad.com/autocad/2015/04/introduction-to-realdwg-net-programming.html  but even then you're pretty-much on your own with Wix. You know that awkward genious that nobody understands? That's Wix. Protip: get Wax.

It makes sense that there is not a project template for that because you're generally not building many different apps with it but [expletive deleted] it really shouldn't be that hard. You know all that brainspace you need to dedicate to your actual app, well get ready to redirect it to something that should be a rote, routine task but isn't - building your installer.

Re-invent that wheel!

For the record, I remember OpenDesign's Teigha .NET classic as far more approachable and much easier to get started with. 

</rant>

[BKSpurgeon]

Example: 

http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/net/no-ordinatedimension-setorigin/m-p/5691557/highlight/true#M45072

Please refer to the OP's last question (as a side-note).

[TomBeauford]

I've had many links to the DXF Reference like www.autodesk.com/dxf or http://www.autodesk.com/techpubs/autocad/dxf/ or http://exchange.autodesk.com/autocad/enu/online-help/browse#WS73099cc142f48755a52158612bd434e551-7fd... none of them work anymore.

The only version I can find anymore is PDF which chokes down my PC.  Why would you take something away from us that so many people use?  You provided more help 10 years ago than I can find now.

Civil 3D includes Map 3D and AutoCAD so why is Civil 3D the only thing I can access from help? Shouldn't we be able to select which area to find help in?  Does it make sense to only provide support for Civil 3D?