Nearly a top AutoCAD 2006 Beta Site

Congratulations to Lee Ambrosius for his no. 1 position! According to Shaan Hurley I was close though. This was not to forget with the help of several users at Pharmadule Emtunga that used the beta version of AutoCAD 2006 in full production for several months. The beta participation was well worth the effort. It is a great opportunity to influence the development of the next AutoCAD. If you want to be a part of it go here and you might be a part of the AutoCAD 2007 beta program or some other beta.

AutoCAD 2006 and access to the hatch area using API

The area is available but the property is available using the IAcadHatch2 interface. Here is a small sample in VBA showing it.

Sub Example_HatchAreas()
    Dim oSset As AcadSelectionSet
    Dim oHatch As IAcadHatch2
    Set oSset = ThisDrawing.SelectionSets.Add("TEST_SSET1")
    oSset.SelectOnScreen
    For Each oHatch In oSset
        Debug.Print oHatch.Area
    Next
End Sub

Press release: JTB World releases JTB FlexReport 2.0

2005-04-11 - JTB World releases JTB FlexReport 2.0 that helps IT or CAD Managers to reduce license costs and have better control of the license usage.
Now with even better functionality and reports:

Advanced grouping of features, users or servers.

Separate usage per server.

Detailed user usage logging.

Borrow usage is logged.

Ability to run as a service.


JTB FlexReport is a report tool for applications using the FLEXnet / FLEXlm software licensing. Do you want to optimize your software purchases tomorrow? JTB FlexReport is a inexpensive solution that will help you. By the tracking JTB FlexReport does and the graphic reports that can be produced JTB FlexReport will helps you to manage and forecast license usage at your company. Is SAMsuite or SAMreport a too expensive product? Then take a good look at JTB FlexReport.
JTB FlexReport will help you to see the license usage over the time. This will help you to decide when and how many licenses you will need to purchase next time. Instead of guessing and purchasing more licenses than you really need you can save your money using JTB FlexReport.
JTB FlexReport can also produce HTML reports showing who uses the licenses right now. Click here for a sample.
Data is also logged so you can track the usage per user.
Lets say you have 10 licenses of your software that costs $3,000. Now you have 20 users that shares these licenses. Do you know if you really need these 10 licenses or if you need more now when 2 more users are coming in? If you have JTB FlexReport it will be easier to make a correct decision. If you just need to purchase 1 less license imagine your benefit of using JTB FlexReport.
Applications and companies that uses FLEXnet / FLEXlm from Macrovision (formerly Globetrotter Software) are many. Over 2500 independent software vendors have used the FLEXnet / FLEXlm family of products. Among them are companies and/or applications from Autodesk, AVEVA (PDMS), Borland, Cadence, CADopia (IntelliCAD), Cognos, EDS, I-Deas, Macromedia, Mathsoft (MathCAD), Mathworks (Matlab), Pixar, Platform, Progman/Cadcom, PTC (Pro-Engineer), Rasterx (RxView), Softimage, Solidworks, Sybase, WindRiver, etc.
Look at the PowerPoint presentation about JTB FlexReport Make sure you view the show since it's animated. Press F5 in PowerPoint.
Get JTB FlexReport and join other users around the globe like VOLVO IT, Imation, Leica Geosystems, COWI AS, Boyle Engineering, WD Partners, Siemens Logistics and Assembly Systems and Berkley Lab.

RSS support in Autodesk Discussion Groups

Have you noticed this little icon in the discussion groups? This gives you the ability to subscribe to the RSS feed with your favorite RSS aggregator or "blog reader".

New ADT e-Learning

Chris has posted about the new ADT e-Learning. It's worth giving a try if you are a subscription customer.

VBRun

Microsoft has recently created the site VBRun to make the transition from VB6 to VB.NET easier. It's worth to put in your link collection.

Mark Douglas about Dynamic Block Hatch's

Mark shows a smart usage of dynamic blocks to create custom hatches on his blog http://mdouglas.blogs.com/in_the_dynamic_interface/2005/04/dynamic_block_h.html

Comparision sheet between C# and VB.NET

Steven Swafford has put together a comparision sheet between C# and VB.NET that is really good.

Copying files from internet using VBS

I got a question on how to do this from my fellow worker Robert and thought I should put the answer here.
One way is using the XMLHTTP object combined with adodb.stream like this using VBScript:

' Requirements: ADO 2.5+ and IE 5+
sSourceUrl = "http://www.jtbworld.com/images/"
sDestFolder = "c:\temp\"
sImageFile = "jtbworld.gif"
Set oXMLHTTP = WScript.CreateObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP")
oXMLHTTP.open "GET", sSourceUrl & sImageFile, False
oXMLHTTP.send
Set oStream = CreateObject("adodb.stream")
Const adTypeBinary = 1
Const adSaveCreateOverWrite = 2
oStream.Type = adTypeBinary
oStream.open
oStream.write oXMLHTTP.responseBody
oStream.SaveToFile sDestFolder & sImageFile, adSaveCreateOverWrite
Set oStream = Nothing
Set oXMLHTTP = Nothingx

ICCNewsletter for April

Read it by downloading this PDF It's about AutoCAD 2006, Architectural CAD practices, Using fields, Subscription program The Good, the Bad, the Reality. It's worth reading! Want it every month? Sign up here.

Lisp for .NET for the Lisp geeks

Did you know that you can create managed .NET code using Lisp? If you have VS.2003 check here: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003\SDK\v1.1\Tool Developers Guide\Samples\clisp You can also look at DotLisp or RDNZL for Common Lisp.

ColorPicker.NET a nice free tool

Here is a free small useful tool that is like Photoshop's color picker. http://sano.dotnetgeeks.net/colorpicker/ The source code is also available.

AutoCAD 2006 and image frames

AutoCAD 2006 made a change to the command IMAGEFRAME. Before it could be On or Off. To display and plot the images or not. Now there are three states 0, 1 or 2 so you can show the image but not having it plotted. This command is saving the value in the drawing in the dictionary ACAD_IMAGE_VARS. Observere that AutoCAD 2006 has three states now 0, 1 or 2 but the dictionary value is 0, 1 or 3 A simple way to retrieve the value is:

(defun imageframe ()
  (setq dict (dictsearch (namedobjdict) "ACAD_IMAGE_VARS"))
  (if (not dict) 
    0 
    (cdr (assoc 70 dict))
  ) 
)

AutoCAD 2006 and formulas in fields, tables and the calculator

A great addition is formulas that can be used in fields, tables and the calculator. The question is what functions can be used? I've searched the documentation and found that the QuickCalc Calculator, CAL supports some standard numeric functions. Here is the list: abs,acos,asin,atan,cos,d2r,exp,exp10,ln,log,pi,r2d,round,sin,sqr,sqrt,tang,trunc as well as these operators: ^,*,/,+,-,(,). Even though it's not specifically documented these functions and operators can be used in formulas in fields and tables. When checking further on the formulas in fields I found that when you are editing a formula you can insert new fields. In the sample showed on the image I've grabbed the length of a line and rounded it to the nearest value that is a multiple of 5.