AutoLISP controlling dialog boxes

[Anonymous]

I'm studying AutoLISP and I see that AutoLISP can control dialog boxes written as DCL files.  Can AutoLISP control the normal AutoCAD dialog boxes or just custom dialog boxes written in DCL?

[M_Hensley · Accepted solution]

Autolisp cannot control any of AutoCAD's built-in dialog boxes. You have to use only command line versions of AutoCAD commands and make your own dialog boxes. I like to use the free Doslib add-on from McNeel that has a lot of pre-made dialog boxes that you can control with lisp.

[Kent1Cooper]

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@Anonymous wrote:

....  Can AutoLISP control the normal AutoCAD dialog boxes or just custom dialog boxes written in DCL?

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It depends a little on what you mean by "control."  It can't alter their content, as far as I know.  When using a command that normally has a dialog box in a (command) function, the command-line version [without the dialog box] is normally used.  If you're just talking about controlling whether you get the dialog box with a command invoked in AutoLisp, you can get it [in most cases -- there may be exceptions] by preceding the (command) function with (initdia), which means "initiate the dialog box for the immediately-following command."