AutoLISP beginner

[Anonymous]

I am falling at the first hurdle with AutoLISP. I am trying to load AutoCAD's text editor.

My instruction book says

Go to Tools> AutoLISP> Visual LISP Editor

But in the Tools dropdown there is no AutoLISP option.

Instead I can go straight to Load Application instead - but there is no AutoLISP there either. 

I have read the other topics of AutoLISP on this board - but they too seem to be missing some information. And done a number of searches on the internet. Is there something missing in my program? I have tried with AutoCAD 2011 for MAC and now AutoCAD2012 for MAC. 

What am I missing?

Thanks in advance.

[brianchapmandesign]

Command is "vlide"

[Anonymous]

Thanks for your reply... tried this but no luck yet:

So trying it with AutoCAD 2012 gives the following

error: VLIDE can't be invoked because an initialization file is missing.

Also on AutoCAD 2011 the error is: VLIDE disabled.

Edit...

Having read through some other posts it would appear that Visual LISP editor is not in AutoCAD for Mac - but there also seem to be discussions on AutoCAD for Mac where people ARE using it successfully. Is the Visual LISP editor - or perhaps a similar editor avialable for download?

How are people getting around this? Are you running parallel? Or through a text editor?

[David_Stacey · Accepted solution]

Hi
I'm just using a text editor. BBedit is a good solution. It is important to note visual lisp is not supported in autocad for mac. Straight good-ol autolisp works fine.

[maxim_k · Accepted solution]

You can also try to use one of these text editors (with parentheses checking support):

1. Free

Fraise - http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/33751/fraise - it also support color coding for Lisp functions

TextWrangler - http://itunes.apple.com/en/app/textwrangler/id404010395?mt=12 - Mac App Store - you need to create special file for color coding for Lisp functions

Smultron (old version) - http://sourceforge.net/projects/smultron/files/smultron/3.5.1/Smultron-3.5.1.zip/download - it also support color coding for Lisp functions

2. Paid

Smultron 4  (new version) - http://itunes.apple.com/en/app/smultron-4/id450194894?mt=12  - Mac App Store

AutoLisp documentation:

AutoLISP Developer's Guide (.pdf)

AutoLISP Reference Guide (.pdf)

those are for AC 2012 for Mac but in most cases applied to AC 2011 for Mac

HTH

Maxim

[Anonymous]

Thank you for all your responses.

I am currently doing OK with text editor - and will chose one of the colour coding ones for later.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for pointing out that the Mac AutoCAD doesn't have the Lisp Visual editor/IDE.  I will move to the Windows version (via Parallels).

FYI, TextWrangler & BBEdit have an AutoLisp "Language Module" for color-coding AutoLisp syntax, which can be found here:

http://www.barebones.com/support/bbedit/plugin_library.html

Very easy to install, and the color coding is very helpful.