Annotate/Some other things.

I've been searching AutoLISP up for about 5-days now, I know nothing of what I'm doing, I've just barely found a few scratches of reference guides.

I'm trying to help a buddy of mine, write some scripts, and of course I do a bit of scripting/coding with a few other languages. But unfortunately, I'm taken back a few steps, I've dealt with languages I felt were troublesome, and maybe I haven't dealt with anything truly tedious yet.

I've not a lot of resources, or references to help answer many of my questions, but I'm trying to create an annotate command, I have one on hand currently, it seems my friend had a copy of one, but it seems to no longer work, not only that. But in my eyes, it seems very heavily bloated, and asked if I could try to fix it for him.

(Being the friend that I am..) So.. aside from the short amount of story that I tend to tap on with nonsense.

Is there anyone willing to point me in the right directions, and or help me, with the work of a 2D annotation command. I've seen a few others, but like I said, we're having trouble getting some of the old commands to work, they seem to only work when they want to.

What can I say? I AutoLISP is one of the few languages I feel so frustrated by, I'd really appreciate some feedback, I'd really.. really appreciate it. Thanks.

Just what does this 2D annotation command do?

How long ago was the original code written?

Well my friend works with surveying and the such, so most of what he needs is the length of various lines, often degrees, bearings and etc. As for the original code, the one he seems to have a copy of, it appears to have been written sometime back in 1998, another in 2000. Although I don't think LISP has seen any updates at all. (If my research is right.. it has been dropped, for another alternative.)

EDIT: He's a CAD Technician, not the exactly surveyor, I don't know what his actuall occupation is besides, he works with land/property, etc. He was making a complaint about how easy his job would be, if he could just click on things and annoate boxes/shapes or singular lines, or run commands etc.

It is a known fact that AutoDesk, with each new release, we add and/or delete certain commands and system variables some of which may have an affect on how a lisp routine will function. For example, see this regarding AutoCAD 2012 for removed or obsolete commands and system variables...

http://www.jtbworld.com/autocad2012.htm

Note: the section I refer to is very near the bottom of the page.

So it sounds like the lisp routine will label a property line with the distance and bearing. Is that correct? What else might it do or is that all?

Well, just distance, length of line (measurable in some form I think feet, or inches. but I think that's configurable. )

Well, just to review it all, It showed bearing, the whole n,s,w,e. It might have shown an angle (With a degree mark.. but I'm not positive.) But yes, I believe that is correct.

Sorry If I'm not being very informative, I'm just trying to compile together my own information at the same time here.

In all likelihood the distance was actually in decimal feet and inches. So, a property line might have a distance of 123.50' (which is the equivalent of 123 feet 6 inches). The bearing would be written in degrees, minutes and seconds and indicate direction. In my experience it was rare to see a property map that had both bearings and angles. It was usually one or the other.

What you describe is fairly common and I know I have seen lisp routines that do this. Unless you are doing this as a learning exercise you might turn your attention to finding one of these routines. I'd suggest trying over at the Cadalyst magazine website under the CAD Tips area. They have an entire library of lisp routines.

I'll take a look into it, I'm not certain what my friend does, I know that he adds the mintues and all the other things. I'll take look for the other things, In the truth, I was aiming to find a way to better understand the language, it is not like hello world for most typical languages. (Where this one is typically just used for it's tasks.)

I've dealt with languages such as Lua, Python, Autoit, C, C++, all very lightly, and spend most of my time with PHP (I do love playing with other languages.. sometimes challenges) But I'll take a look to see if what I can find.

I appreciate your time.

Check for information about AutoLISP by first clicking on the "LINKS" button at the top of this page. Look for AfraLISP. There will probably be others as well. Also do an Internet search for "Lee Mac Programming" and look at some of the programs he has written.

I appreciate it, I'll come back if I have further questions, This helps a great deal. Otherwise hard to find things, seem easily findable. (Truly.. a lot of this does not come up with a search engine with my previous keywords. Just kept trying new ones ever day.)

Have a good day.

Knowing how to write good search criteria can help immensely when it comes to locating information.

As regards AutoLISP here are a few links for you to pursue.

http://www.jefferypsanders.com/index.html

http://ronleigh.com/autolisp/

http://web2.airmail.net/terrycad/AutoLISP-Code.htm

That's enough for now. I can't give you all the good stuff immediately as you'll be totally overwhelmed. Have fun.