
Bricscad v11 manual plus#
Let’s start with something easy, something everyone knows about, adding together two numbers, like 9 plus 7. With that bit of background, let’s dive right into using LISP.
Bricscad v11 manual code#
The primary advantage of using SDS is speed: these programs run compute-intensive code as much as 100 times faster than LISP.

In contrast, BricsCAD’s most powerful programming facility - known as SDS (solutions development system) - is merely an interface: you have to buy additionally the programming tools (read: $$$) and have an in-depth knowledge of advanced programming methodology.
Bricscad v11 manual how to#
In the next posts, I show you how to write simple LISP code to make your BricsCAD drafting day easier. The most important aspect of LISP, in my opinion, is that it lets you toss off a few lines of code to help automate your work.

LISP is capable of many masks, from adding together two numbers - during the middle of a command, to drawing a staircase in 3D parametrically, to generating a new user interface for BricsCAD, to manipulating data in the drawing database… In AutoCAD ®, these functions start with “ase_”, as in ase_lsunite and ase_docmp.

Better yet, they could have given it the trendy moniker of iLISP.) BLADE ENVIRONMENTīricsCAD includes LISP and supports VisualLISP (not covered in these posts). When SoftDesk developed IntelliCAD, they included a programming language very similar to AutoLISP, calling it simply “LISP.” (I think it would have been better to call it IntelliLISP to prevent confusion with the real LISP programming language. With additional releases, Autodesk added the missing programming statements, the powerful GETxxx, SSxxx, and EntMod routines (that provide direct access to entities in the drawing database) and they renamed the programming language “AutoLISP.” This allowed third-party developers to write routines that manipulated an entire drawing and non-programmers to write simple routines that automated everyday drafting activities. The initial release of Variables and Expressions was weak because it lacked conditional statements - needed by programming languages to make decisions. LISP first appeared in CAD when, back in 1985, Autodesk added an undocumented feature to AutoCAD ® v2.15 called “Variables and Expressions.” Programmers at Autodesk had taken XLISP, a public domain dialect written by David Betz and adapted it for AutoCAD ®. Its name is short for “list processing,” and it was designed to handle lists of words, numbers, and symbols. LISP is one of the earliest programming languages, developed in the late 1950s to assist artificial intelligence research. Compatability Between BricsCAD and AutoLISP.The following topics are covered in this post: While toolbar and menu macros are easy to write and edit, they limit your ability to control BricsCAD.

You will also learn how to do simple addition in LISP. You will learn what LISP is and how it works in BricsCAD. In this post, we look at the most powerful method available to “non-programmers” for customizing BricsCAD ® - the LISP programming language - at the cost of being somewhat more difficult to create than macros or scripts.
