🔊 - Whats your thoughts on AutoLISP in AutoCAD LT 2024?

[handjonathan]

Hello, AutoCAD community,

The AutoCAD team wants to hear your impressions of AutoLISP, specifically around its availability in the 2024 release of AutoCAD LT.

Which routines are you most excited to use? Let us know in the comments below!

[pbejse]

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@handjonathan wrote:

Hello, AutoCAD community,

The AutoCAD team wants to hear your impressions of AutoLISP, specifically around its availability in the 2024 release of AutoCAD LT.

Which routines are you most excited to use? Let us know in the comments below!

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Its nice that Autodesk allowed lsp routines to work on LT.  It does pose as a challenge to programmers because of  some limitations, re-writes are needed now for existing routines that uses ObjectArx and .NET.  

I don't see not having an IDE as big deal, you just need to know what works and what doesn't in LT. I'm sure in-house programmers has access to full version of AutoCAD where one can write and test the routine.

Good to know get/setpropertyvalue works in LT. I count that as a win 🙂

Overall your Lisp will keel.

[paullimapa]

This is a true win win for customers who cannot afford the hefty price tag of AutoCAD. Now with almost full AutoLISP/Visual Lisp support LT customers can also take advantage of downloading the many apps available on the Autodesk App Store. Each app should be labeled on the App Store so customers can easily identify what works in LT as well as full AutoCAD. Looking forward to the next LT update where perhaps Autodesk would also include the following in LT:

1. Support of mnl files that would automatically load lisp routines matching loaded menu names

2. Includes with LT installation ai_utils.lsp

3. Updated Express Tools that runs outside of AutoCAD like Alias.exe that modifies acad.pgp but for LT that would be acadlt.pgp

[pendean]

@paullimapa Good request: Appstore installations do not recognize LT2024 as being a viable program at the moment.

[JamesMaeding]

@handjonathan 

The biggest thing to me is the ability to run acaddoc.lsp on startup. That allows you to make a self healing system at a company. What I do is also load a .lsp by users login name at the end, so they can then do their tweaks after the company stuff, so they have control in the end.

Then I can load company menus, check variables, all kinds of stuff.

For those who have loved the WT IT set of tools, I attached our latest rendition for LT people.

The idea is these replace the clipboard copy and paste, which is easily overwritten.

This uses wblock methods whose files sit there forever until you overwrite.

It even has a network location for copy and paste between different users (WTN and ITN).

Take a look at the code, the commands are at the top.

If I were autodesk, I would add the VLIDE to LT. You already made the decision that lisp in LT is good, so helping those users to do more lisp is more betterer. You get people going on lisp and they discover .net quickly. Then you sell them upgrade to full acad. Don't miss that boat! Also, you tempt them to try the Bricscad lisp environment so careful there.

[Sea-Haven]

This is not supported

(setq myxl (vlax-get-object "Excel.Application"))
    (setq myxl (vlax-get-or-create-object "excel.Application"))

 So any Autocad -> Excel -> Autocad lisp will not work so back to CSV for export / import related to excel. Did have  Word stuff as well.

Price wise very close, but Bricscad may be cheaper say over 3 years. Pro version is. 

[haper74945]

Bricscad is still a way better deal. Asking that much to temporarily rent a software is just ridiculous.

[braudpat]

Hello

In France, ZWCAD / ZWCAD Pro is popular and is cheaper than ACAD LT 2024 !

But many people will NOW buy ACAD LT 2024 instead of ZWCAD (or BrisCAD or GStarCAD) because it's Autodesk !

The Health, Bye, Patrice (The Old French EE Froggy)

[JamesMaeding]

@haper74945 

I used to think rental was a bad deal, and it could be, especially for the people who used to share network seats between more than 2 people each. Autodesk manages to once again give deals (the 2 for 1...) to previous customers so the rental cost is about same as traditional annual sub. Every time I think we will pay almost full price, we don't.

So the "new" seat rental cost is indeed really high compared to bcad, but adesk bought some time with current deals so cost comparing is a big muddy pool.

I can say the VLIDE for acad is much different than the lisp IDE for bcad. I do large projects in list with 50 or so code files and the bcad IDE does not handle that well. It loads them slow because it analyzes them.

I need to revisit that but currently debug with acad VLIDE.

To the Admin, thx for moderating.

[trazardesign]

Es una excelente oportunidad para que usuarios de AutoCAD LT puedan conocer y utilizar las herramientas de productividad MEP de Trazar Collections que trabaja en AutoCAD 2015 (o superior) y ahora en AutoCAD LT 2024.

https://trazar.com.pa 

[Sea-Haven]

50 lisps, one of my client project has 121 lisps with a total of 360 files. I have multiple projects. Out to 1200 lines of code in one lisp.

Not sure what you mean by 50 lisps is slow are you loading all 50 on startup as there are ways around this to demand load when you type a command. I load 3 lisps on startup, but one my autoload.lsp has like 25 "Autoload" functions a inbuilt function, plus all the menu's just load the lisp when asked. No load lisp speed problems, its normally instant. 

[vladimir_michl]

A surprisingly low number of limitations of AutoLISP in LT. So most existing LISP routines will work. And I also like the silent handling of unsupported calls/errors. Alas, some kind of "debug mode" might be useful to track the not executed functions.

My list of limitations (found so far): https://www.cadforum.cz/en/limitations-of-the-lisp-language-autolisp-visuallisp-autocad-lt-tip13683

Vladimir Michl, www.arkance-systems.cz  -  www.cadforum.cz

[Sea-Haven]

Hi Vladimir, do fas or vlx files work ?

Also can you use a bundle ?

[vladimir_michl]

Yes, .fas and .vlx do work (but you cannot compile them in LT). Even the .bundle mechanism does work. You just need to add "ACADLT" to the RuntimeRequirements section in the manifest XML file (and this is not documented AFAIK).

Vladimir Michl, www.arkance-systems.cz  -  www.cadforum.cz

[Sea-Haven]

Thank you for the information.

[JamesMaeding]

Ah, good info. I like adesk's approach of "Use, but do not compose" lisp in LT. That makes sense, and they should defend the features of full acad.

The big question is why they did this.

I would not have done it. I think the automation value of full acad is deserving of the price.

Sorry for all the LT people rejoicing at this feature, which I have just said should be paid more for.

It totally depends on how much a company takes advantage of automation.

[Sea-Haven]

Thats why the clone CAD programs are so poplular, their price and functionality, lisp and .NET development.

Years ago there was a Lisp Enabler for LT hugely popular but Autodesk won the court case so it no longer exists.

[handjonathan]

Thank you @Sea-Haven  @JamesMaeding @vladimir_michl @trazardesign @braudpat @pbejse @paullimapa @pendean @haper74945 for your insight and thoughts on this.

[james_moore]

Give me LISP in ACADLT, and I'll be almost forced to create an AutoCAD based Electrical-LT.

[Sea-Haven]

Better get yourself a copy and start testing.