Last month, Autodesk released the AutoCAD 2016 program and many other products in the 2016 family. Every new release brings with it a variety of features and productivity enhancements, those I covered as a guest author on Ellen Finkelstein's AutoCAD blog. While I enjoy writing and talking about the features that are introduced with each new release of the AutoCAD program, the stuff that most users never see is what I really enjoy digging into each year.
There have been many small and large changes to the AutoCAD application programming interfaces (APIs) in the latest release. While I cannot cover them all in depth here, I will highlight the many changes that were introduced.
The developer related documentation can be found at:
http://help.autodesk.com/view/ACD/2016/ENU/
The following outlines the changes that have were made:
General Updates
- CAD Administration and Customization links have been moved to the CAD Management and Developer's Home page in the AutoCAD Help system. (http://help.autodesk.com/view/ACD/2016/ENU/files/homepage_dev.htm)
- General development resources are now easier to access with direct links on the CAD Management and Developer's Home page:
- Custom program files can be digitally signed to let AutoCAD know it is safe to load the file. You can digitally these custom program files:
- LSP, MNL, FAS, and VLX
- DLL
- ARX, CRX, and DBX
AutoLISP
- No new or changed functions this release.
- The getcfg and setcfg functions have been marked as obsolete.
- Historical list of changes from AutoCAD 2009 through AutoCAD 2016 can be used to identify potential problems in existing programs.
DCL
- No new or changed functions/tiles this release.
- Alphabetical lists of tiles and predefined attributes are now available.
ActiveX
- No new classes were added, but the following here changed:
- IAcadDocument
- IAcadPointCloudEx
- IAcadSection
- IAcadSecurityParams
- IAcadShadowDisplay
- Password protection of drawing files has been removed; if you need to secure a drawing file you will need to use a third-party library or utility. Digital signatures are still supported.
- A full list of the changes can be found in the AutoCAD 2016 API History topic.
- Clickable Object Model has been updated based on all of the classes that are part of the AutoCAD ActiveX/COM library.
- ActiveX Reference topics continue to be accessible from the VBA IDE via the CHM file format.
- ActiveX Developer's Guide continues to be available online as part of the AutoCAD Help system and offline as a CHM file (C:\Program Files\Common Files\Autodesk Shared\acad_aag.chm)
Managed .NET
- Developer's Guide is accessible from the AutoCAD Help system.
- New topics were added to support the render presets related to the RapidRT rendering engine.
- Updates were made to the Reference Guide to include the new classes, interfaces, and functions introduced for this release.
- Refer to the Managed Class Reference Guide (part of the ObjectARX SDK) and the What's New topic for a list of changes made to the API.
- API and documentation can be downloaded from the ADN or ObjectARX websites.
- Documentation is accessible via CHM and a Visual Studio integration installer.
ObjectARX
- Updates were made to include the new classes, interfaces, and functions introduced for this release.
- Refer to the ObjectARX Reference Guide and the What's New topic for a list of changes made to the API.
- API and documentation can be downloaded from the ADN or ObjectARX websites.
- Documentation is accessible via CHM and a Visual Studio integration installer.
JavaScript
- Version 3 of the API and the documentation are available. (Online only)
In a future blog posting, I plan to cover how custom programs can be digitally signed and loaded into the AutoCAD program.
Sincerely,
Lee
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