Bones, clones, and cyclones

My blogging has taken a nosedive in recent years, but I’m happy to report that I am doing great. I’ve been 100% focused on making sure there’s a viable alternative DWG platform for all you lost, lonely, and depressed CAD users out there. I’m going to keep this short and sweet, because as I write this I am still 100% focused on the task: putting finishing touches on BricsCAD V19 to be released “soon”. ...

November 7, 2018 · 2 min · Owen Wengerd

Turning off InfoCenter in AutoCAD

Are you looking for a way to turn off the annoying InfoCenter that slows down (or sometimes locks up) your AutoCAD? Of course you are! Hop on over to the ManuSoft Freebies page and install AcadInfoCenterOff.msi, the most popular ManuSoft download of all time. ...

March 21, 2017 · 1 min · Owen Wengerd

QuirkyPolyline updated for Bricscad and ZWCAD+

I’ve updated QuirkyPolyline and added support for Bricscad 14 – 15 and ZWCAD+ 2014 – 2015. The new QuirkyPolyline download is available on the ObjectARX freebies page. Share ThisTweetFacebookLinkedInTumblrStumbleDiggDelicious

December 9, 2014 · 1 min · Owen Wengerd

Building a commercial grade lisp plugin installer in 5 easy steps

Rumors about the death of AutoLISP have been floating around for many years, but fear not, those rumors are greatly exaggerated. Bricscad and ZWCAD both have excellent support for lisp plugins, so well-written lisp code is truly cross-platform and enjoys a large and growing audience. Unlike other languages, the vast majority of lisp code works unmodified on any hardware architecture, in any version of Windows, and inside any host application that supports it, including AutoCAD versions released more than a decade ago. On top of that, OpenDCL gives lisp developers the power of a modern event-driven user interface that can put their lisp plugins on the same playing field as plugins written in any other language. This is a powerful combination, and given lisp’s low entry cost, it is not surprising to see lisp continuing to enjoy strong support in the developer community. ...

February 18, 2014 · 4 min · Owen Wengerd

LspLoad now supports Bricscad V14 and ZWCAD+ 2014

I have updated the automatic lisp loader modules (LspLoad.zip on my freebies page) to support Bricscad V14 and ZWCAD+ 2014. Note that the source code for Lspload is also available.

November 1, 2013 · 1 min · Owen Wengerd

LspLoad Updated for AutoCAD 2014 and Bricscad 13 64-bit

The automatic lisp loader modules (LspLoad.zip on my freebies page) have been updated to add support for AutoCAD 2014 and Bricscad 13 64-bit. The modules are now digitally signed so that AutoCAD 2014 loads them quietly.

April 13, 2013 · 1 min · Owen Wengerd

Turning off InfoCenter in AutoCAD 2014

The AcadInfoCenterOff.msi file on the ManuSoft Freebies page has been updated to support AutoCAD 2014 based products. Note that you must log out of Autodesk 360 if you disable the InfoCenter, else some versions of AutoCAD will crash during startup.

April 11, 2013 · 1 min · Owen Wengerd

QuirkyPolyline: exposing foolish programmers

In AutoCAD, the AcDbCurve class defines a general parametrized curve. On a parametrized curve, points in space are mapped to real numbers (parameters) by an arbitrary function F(p) for values of p from the curve start parameter to the curve end parameter. Defining a curve this way simplifies working with complex 3D curves because one can work in the curve’s one dimensional “parameter space” instead of the more complex three dimensional cartesian space. ...

January 9, 2013 · 4 min · Owen Wengerd

Turning off InfoCenter (aka WSCommCntr4.exe) in AutoCAD 2013

I have updated the AcadInfoCenterOff.msi file on the ManuSoft Freebies page for AutoCAD 2013. If you’re not sure what it does or why you need it, see this previous post on the subject.

March 28, 2012 · 1 min · Owen Wengerd

OpenDCL 6

You may not have noticed, but AutoLISP is still alive and kicking. This is evidenced by the growing community of developers and hobbyist programmers using the latest release of OpenDCL, the free graphical user interface library for AutoLISP applications. If you’re not familiar with OpenDCL, check out the newly released OpenDCL 6.

August 5, 2011 · 1 min · owenwengerd

ObjectARX Wizard for Visual Studio 2010

If you’re an ObjectARX programmer, you may still be using Visual Studio 2008 because you’ve been told that you must. It’s true that you need Visual Studio 2008 installed to compile native ObjectARX code, but with Daffodil you can do all your work in the Visual Studio 2010 IDE. ...

April 1, 2011 · 1 min · Owen Wengerd

AutoCAD 2012 InfoCenter

If you’re upgrading to AutoCAD 2012, don’t forget to also disable InfoCenter (unless you really need it). Just download and install AcadInfoCenterOff to disable it on any version of AutoCAD or AutoCAD LT. If you already have AcadInfoCenterOff installed, you can just run a repair install to apply it to a newly installed instance of AutoCAD 2012.

March 25, 2011 · 1 min · Owen Wengerd