AutoCAD® 2009 & AutoCAD LT® 2009 Bible

Chapter 34. Understanding AutoLISP and Visual LISP Basics

AutoLISP is a programming language supported by AutoCAD that can greatly enhance your productivity by automating often-used or repetitive tasks. AutoLISP provides a glimpse into the inner workings of AutoCAD and can serve as an excellent stepping-stone to learning more advanced automation methods, such as ObjectARX and VBA. An AutoLISP routine gives you complete control over its interaction with the user and what it does after it's loaded.

You can type AutoLISP expressions on the command line in response to prompts, or you can save your code to a file that you can load and use when needed. AutoLISP offers wide and varied possibilities for shortcuts. Best of all, you can customize AutoLISP to any level of complexity.

AutoLISP intimidates many AutoCAD users, but this fear is unwarranted. The many benefits of AutoLISP well justify the initial time that you invest to learn this rich and full-featured programming language.

You can also find a tremendous number of AutoLISP routines on the Internet. Many CAD Web sites offer huge libraries of AutoLISP routines as free downloads. (For more details, see Appendix B.) Many CAD offices have created AutoLISP routines to expedite some common tasks.

Many of the commands that you already use in AutoCAD are AutoLISP routines, including 3DARRAY, MVSETUP, AI_BOX, and others. You can often find examples of how to handle complex problems by reviewing these applications.

LISP stands for List Processing ...