By Dennis Collin
It is that time of year again, and whilst it’s nice for AutoCAD to wish us Season’s Greetings, it is often much more beneficial to automate AutoCAD to do those tedious tasks like Batch Plotting, Batch cleaning drawings, element renumbering etc.
Fortunately, AutoCAD does have a powerful API and there is a myriad of routines available to make the AutoCAD drafter’s life easier, potentially leave the office on time and get those last-minute Christmas preparations done!
AutoLisp has been around for many years and despite its age can still be used to perform many useful tasks.
I have outlined a few examples below:
A rather fun lisp routine generates a Christmas Tree and provides a rather jolly message on screen and on the command prompt. It may not improve drawing productivity, but it did bring a smile to my face.
It runs on the latest version of AutoCAD and can be loaded like any external routines by the Appload command.
The Xmas tree Lisp routine can be accessed here!
https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/visual-lisp-autolisp-and-general/merry-christmas-2017/td-p/7628767
Simply copy the text into notepad. Save it as Xmastree.lsp. Access the Lisp file from Appload and run by typing in ‘XMASTREE’. Usual disclaimer, only run the routine on an empty or disposable drawing!
As my screenshot shows it works on the latest AutoCAD 2023.1.x enjoy.