AutoCAD 2018 marks for me the 11th product release that I worked on, it is hard to believe that I started working with the AutoCAD team about 12 years ago now (2 years as a consultant and going on 10 years as an employee). Prior to joining Autodesk, I was a developer for a fairly large company and an ADN member that lived and died by the AutoCAD developer documentation. For me, this release marks a special milestone that I have been pushing towards for several years now and that is the merging of the AutoCAD platform developer documentation.
The AutoCAD application programming interfaces (APIs) this release has seen some changes, based on your usage of certain areas the changes might feel minor while to others they might be major. In this article, I simply highlight the changes that were introduced and don't go into any great depth; you can find out specifics about the API changes in the developer documentation itself. I do plan on covering some specific changes in future articles though.
The AutoCAD developer documentation can be found at:
http://help.autodesk.com/view/OARX/2018/ENU/
Some of the developer documentation (AutoLISP and ActiveX), can also be found while searching in the AutoCAD product documentation:
http://help.autodesk.com/view/ACD/2018/ENU/
The following outlines the changes that were made to the AutoCAD APIs:
General Updates
- Developer Documentation Home Page has been expanded and slightly reorganized:
- AutoLISP and DCL related links are now broken out into their own subsections
- Documentation for the non-standard AutoCAD ActiveX libraries has been broken out into their own subsection
- Managed .NET Reference guide is now merged into the online documentation
- ObjectARX documentation has now been merged into the online documentation
- Updated the HEADER Section of the DXF documentation to include the AC1032 value for the AutoCAD 2018 drawing format of the $ACADVER variable
- Documentation was centralized and a table of contents (TOC) was reintroduced for all publications
AutoLISP
- No new or changed functions this release
- Topic was added that covers getting and calculating date\time values based on feedback around changes to the CDATE and DATE system variables.(http://help.autodesk.com/view/OARX/2018/ENU/?guid=GUID-EF8856E5-DB58-4EFC-B223-AB8B8A25F240)
- Note was clarified in the *push-error-using-command* and *push-error-using-stack* function topics
- VLA-* functions related to the IAcadFileDependencies and
IAcadFileDependencyclasses are no longer available as a result of them being removed from the AutoCAD ActiveX library - Historical list of changes from AutoCAD 2009 through AutoCAD 2018 can be used to identify potential problems in existing programs(http://help.autodesk.com/view/OARX/2018/ENU/?guid=GUID-037BF4D4-755E-4A5C-8136-80E85CCEDF3E)
DCL
- No new or changed functions/tiles this release.
ActiveX/COM
- No new classes were added, but the ProgIds for the following have changed which might impact your existing programs:
AcadAcCmColorAcadApplicationAcadLayerStateManagerAcadSecurityParams
- The
IAcadFileDependenciesandIAcadFileDependencyclasses are now obsolete as a result of the File Dependency feature being removed - The
AcSaveAsTypeenum was updated to include constants for the new drawing file format - Documentation continues to be available online through the AutoCAD product help and now the AutoCAD developer documentation site, and offline as CHM files in the %ProgramFiles%\Common Files\Autodesk Shared\en-US\ directory; the two CHM files are named acad_aag.chm and acadauto.chm
- Historical list of changes from AutoCAD 2000 through AutoCAD 2018 can be used to identify potential problems in existing programs(http://help.autodesk.com/view/OARX/2018/ENU/?guid=GUID-F3522375-9407-48B7-BE25-E24BC07C5F23)
Managed .NET
- Updates were made to the Reference Guide to include the new members introduced in this release (http://help.autodesk.com/view/OARX/2018/ENU/?guid=OREFNET-What and http://help.autodesk.com/view/OARX/2018/ENU/?guid=OREFNET-_NET_Migration_Guide).
- New events were added to detect when all drawings are being closed, and when the size/location of a palette is being changed
- New properties to identify the number of transactions that are currently open
- New method to determine if a named layout exists
- New methods to create/destroy views and create viewports via the Graphics System manager
- FileDependencyInfo and FileDependencyManager classes were removed
- Among other changes
- Libraries and documentation can be downloaded from the ADN or ObjectARX websites (http://www.objectarx.com/).
- Reference documentation is accessible:
- Online via the AutoCAD developer documentation site (http://help.autodesk.com/view/OARX/2018/ENU/)
- As a CHM file in the ObjectARX 2018 SDK
- As part of the Microsoft Visual Studio integration installer (http://images.autodesk.com/adsk/files/objectarx_2018_documentation_vs2015.zip)
- As XML documentation that can be accessed using the Intellisense feature of the Visual Studio code editor window and the Object Browser; this documentation is part of the ObjectARX SDK and no longer needs to be downloaded separately
- Developer's documentation is accessible:
- Online via the AutoCAD developer documentation site
- As a CHM file in the ObjectARX 2018 SDK; no longer needs to be downloaded separately
- Changes to the Managed .NET Developer's Guide
- General revisions related to binary compatibility changes were made
- Topic about securing Managed .NET applications has been added (http://help.autodesk.com/view/OARX/2018/ENU/?guid=GUID-C3E22BC9-5703-4F7A-AFFA-D9FE9B39E1BA)
ObjectARX
- Updates were made to the Reference Guide to include the new members introduced in this release (http://help.autodesk.com/view/OARX/2018/ENU/?guid=OREF-What and http://help.autodesk.com/view/OARX/2018/ENU/?guid=OREF-ObjectARX_Migration_Guide).
- New event was added to detect when all drawings are being closed
- New property to identify the number of transactions that are currently open
- New methods and properties related to HiDPI support
- New methods to create/destroy views and create viewports via the Graphics System manager
- AcFileDependencyInfo and AcFileDependencyManager classes were removed
- Among other changes
- SDK and documentation can be downloaded from the ADN or ObjectARX websites (http://www.objectarx.com/).
- Reference documentation is accessible:
- Online via the AutoCAD developer documentation site (http://help.autodesk.com/view/OARX/2018/ENU/)
- As a CHM file in the ObjectARX 2018 SDK
- As part of the Microsoft Visual Studio integration installer (http://images.autodesk.com/adsk/files/objectarx_2018_documentation_vs2015.zip)
- Developer's documentation is accessible:
- Online via the AutoCAD developer documentation site
- As a CHM file in the ObjectARX 2018 SDK
- Changes to the ObjectARX Developer's Guide
- General revisions related to binary compatibility changes were made
- Topic about securing ObjectARX applications has been added (http://help.autodesk.com/view/OARX/2018/ENU/?guid=GUID-36C2008C-0321-4BB3-8A08-8CC3569A8368)
JavaScript
- No new or changed functions this release. V3 remains the latest version of the API (https://df-prod.autocad360.com/jsapi/v3/docs/index.html)
- Getting Started Guide can be used to learn the basics of the JavaScript API (https://df-prod.autocad360.com/jsapi/v3/GettingStart/index.html)
Hope you found this overview of the changes to the AutoCAD APIs and developer documentation helpful.
Sincerely,
Lee
Hello,
Good job!
I have a question , I don't find any information about the DATALINK objects in the DXF documentation, Do you know where I could find it?
Thanks
Posted by: Cyril Elkaim | Monday, December 11, 2017 at 03:44 AM
The DATALINK object isn't documented currently in the DXF Reference, the requests to document this information comes from the team that implements the feature. The Datalink feature pre-dates my time as the AutoCAD API Writer, so I don't want to speculate why it wasn't documented. I will add this to my list of things to look into for a future update, no promises as to when it might be documented though.
DATALINK objects are stored in the "ACAD_DATALINK" named dictionary and can be obtained with the DICTSEARCH AutoLISP function among other APIs.
(dictsearch (namedobjdict) "ACAD_DATALINK")
Once you have the entity name of the "ACAD_DATALINK" dictionary, you can then get the Datalinks that are defined in the drawing.
(entget (cdr (assoc 360 (dictsearch (namedobjdict) "ACAD_DATALINK" T))))
((-1 . ) (0 . "DATALINK") (5 . "203") (102 . "{ACAD_REACTORS") (330 . ) (102 . "}") (330 . ) (100 . "AcDbDataLink") (1 . "AcExcel") (300 . "") (301 . "Data Link\nTest Datalink\nC:\\Users\\ambrosl\\Documents\\chair.xls\nLink details: Entire sheet: Sheet1") (302 . "C:\\Users\\ambrosl\\Documents\\chair.xls!Sheet1") (90 . 2) (91 . 68943873) (92 . 1) (170 . 2017) (171 . 12) (172 . 11) (173 . 16) (174 . 11) (175 . 20) (176 . 0) (177 . 1) (93 . 0) (304 . "") (94 . 1) (330 . ) (360 . ) (305 . "CUSTOMDATA") (1 . "DATAMAP_BEGIN") (90 . 3) (300 . "ACEXCEL_CONNECTION_STRING") (301 . "DATAMAP_VALUE") (93 . 2) (90 . 4) (1 . "C:\\Users\\ambrosl\\Documents\\chair.xls!Sheet1") (94 . 0) (300 . "") (302 . "") (304 . "ACVALUE_END") (300 . "ACEXCEL_SOURCEDATE") (301 . "DATAMAP_VALUE") (93 . 2) (90 . 8) (92 . 16) (310 . "E0070900030007000A00110021000000") (94 . 0) (300 . "") (302 . "") (304 . "ACVALUE_END") (300 . "ACEXCEL_UPDATEOPTIONS") (301 . "DATAMAP_VALUE") (93 . 2) (90 . 1) (91 . 68943873) (94 . 0) (300 . "") (302 . "") (304 . "ACVALUE_END") (309 . "DATAMAP_END"))
What information are you specifically looking for?
Sincerely,
Lee
Posted by: Lee Ambrosius | Monday, December 11, 2017 at 10:25 AM