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If you really want to become a power autocad user, you have to learn autocad automation. It is not enough to just master all the autocad commands available in your autocad package. Even if you are fastest human on earth, you are still human and you always reach the peak or the ceiling. One of your limitation is time and in order to draw a drawing object entity, you have to do a series of repeatitive commands called routines. The long list of routines that we do to finish a task is what limits us from finishing more projects. Therefore, to be productive we have to find a way to automate these routines. After all, these are just routines. We learn nothing new doing them over and over.
Fortunately, Autocad comes with tools that can help us automate it: ObjectArx, VBscript and Autolisp. So the problem now is which of these tools should you use to become an autocad power user. Which is better than the other? And which is best: ObjectArx, VBscript and Autolisp?. Well, the answer actually depends on the type of user. By the way, when we talk about automation we are talking about programming or scripting. The things I mentioned are not just plain tools,
they require you to operate them a little more complex than simple tools we used to know. To those who does not know programming, don't be scared. Programming is actually very easy .It is just like giving instructions. Now back to the question. It depends on who uses the tool. For beginners, VBscript is the preferred language not to mention that it is also the most practical. If your purpose is productivity and you don't want to spend more time programming/scripting, then go ahead learn how to automate autocad using VBscript. Go to your autocad help menu and you'll find a button that points you to the documentation and tutorials.
The last two: ObjectArx and Autolisp belong to those who has little experience in programming. Actually, even if you don't have experience in scripting languages, you can still learn AutoLisp. This scripting language is way simplier than objectArx. The good thing about Autolisp is that it has the power of ObjectArx but its codes are very simple and short. A single line of code in Autolisp could be several lines of code in ObjecArx. A simple capability that they both have is the ability to add autocad custom commands and of course the ability to accept values from autocad users. In autolisp, to accept a value from a user takes only a single line of code while in ObjectArx, it takes two to three. When we talk about power and simplicity, AutoLisp is the winner. It is also as simple as VBscript however it is as powerful as ObjectArx. However when it comes to real power and total control over autocad, then the trophy goes to ObjectArx. ObjectArx is so powerfull that you can almost do anything you can imagine for a CAD system with it. As a matter of fact, when you open the program files folder of Autocad, you'll see a lot autocad components that have an icon of Arx which means that they are written using the ObjectArx application programming interface. ObjectArx can only be programmed using C++ - this is the
language of the real geeks in the computer science. Because the ObjectArx topic is so broad, you can't even find its documentation in Autocad help files unlike Autolisp and VBscript. You have to visit the website of Autodesk to learn more about it. Learning ObjectArx at the beginning. But when you already have a good grasp of it, you'll be very happy and you'll feel a complete control over your this most popular CAD system.
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