Learning Visual Lisp LEGALLY at home

[Anonymous]

Hello Folks,

From about few weeks I am writing some scripts using Visual LISP on my company's licensed software (We have legal AutoCAD 2019 copies). It is a powerful tool and I already created a couple of scripts to speed-up my work. The problem is that the office time for self-developing is limited. We focus mostly on drawing and not really researching...

So I want to continue learning&scripting at home, after-hours.

Since the trial version is limited to 30 days (I already used one) and I am not a student anymore to obtain student version, are there some equivalent free IDE to write scripts?

Also, if I wrote a script at home (let's say Notepad) and I want to use it on my office software, would it be a legal problem?

Please, help me to resolve this issue. I really like programming in LISP, but I have no spare 2000 euros for a professional license just for hobby-scripting... Also I'm afraid as f*** to violate any Autodesk Policies.

To sum up:

- I don't want to enroll to University in order to get student license

- I have no 2000 euro for professional version

- I'd rather not ask my company for office laptop with legal software yet (maybe after I really write some powerfull tools)

- My trial version is over

Any ideas?

[Sea-Haven · Accepted solution]

Lots of questions. the 1st is how to run at home. I am not a 100% sure now but depending on your Autocad license there is a clause about "use at home" the idea is that you can use the work license at home. With subscription I am not sure where this is now at. The older perpetuals had this. There is borrow license but if you forget code boss will not be happy.

You will need to do two things read the EULA end user license agreement which no one reads. Second is get your employer to agree to let you use their copy at home if EULA supports.

Now the grey area, into copyright laws as I am not a lawyer only making some very broad comments.

You write code at home -> its yours but who owns CAD license

You write code at work ->  its theirs unless say after hours by agreement

You write code at home just to use it at work -> is it still yours

What can you sell or give away -> ?

So discuss with your employer. I know of some very smart software that was under development, the boss said brilliant we can sell that its ours not yours, the authors walked away from it forever.

[Anonymous]

Thank you for your broad comment.

I'll talk to out IT guy about this possibility and then to my employer.

If you're interested, I'll let you know what was the outcome.

Cheers!

[Anonymous]

@Sea-Haven 

As you have some interet in that topic, here's what I think on learning AutoLISP.

AutoCAD will cause a natural collapse of AutoLISP community at least within architecture field.

Here is why:

1) as architecture student, you wouldn't go into scripting at first.

2) most of the students struggle with learning ANY software. You have a great workload on different subjects, so you want your tools (such as AutoCAD) to be fast, intuitive and simple.

3) From my experience, most of students (90%) would rather keep their software knowledge quite basic. IT'S NOT CRUCIAL to develop scripting skills in order to become a good architect. The rest 10% would rather go into visual scripting such as Grashopper within Rhino. Simply because it works in 3-dimensions and has a great innovation potential. Also, once you're student there is no much repetition of what are you doing. Every other project is touching different scale/approach etc. (whereas AutoLISP strong side is to deal with repetitive work).

4) once you graduate, your student license is done. You start working and you realize some of the work is dull. You also realize there is a way to deal with it, BUT... noone would pay you to learn some scripting in "unknown scripting language", that may but also may not bring any income to the company.

5) So who is going to use AutoLISP in AutoCAD if there is no learning path at the moment? It will become obsolete as Grasshopper would take most of the "architect-programmers" to the parametric field and REVIT would take the rest into 3d BIM world.

I realize though as engaged architect, that there are many simple projects, analysis, "2d sketches", calculations, and other repetitive work, which could be powerfully executed with AutoLISP.

Sadly, In my 10 years experience, I never met anyone in person who has developed that niche...