NET is like the camel’s ability to withstand dehydration. And there is the proverbial limit to the “add on”. AutoLISP and VBA compare to piling on the camel’s back. A camel, can carry a lot of cargo, piled on top of their back. NET is faster, as well as more stable, and much less likely to “stall out.” Though maybe not technically proper, in layman’s terms, I often will compare it to a camel. NET with clients, the question comes out “does it run faster?” My experience says, yes. Also, I have found that “in-session” programming versus the “single-document” processing of AutoLISP and VBA make batch jobs much easier to manage. NET Framework for GUI tools and data accessing. Autodesk is doing more and more internal development using the. NET programming environment is referred to as a ‘managed API’ versus the COM environment being ‘unmanaged’. NET and discontinuation of VBA development.Īnd now I have introduced. That is one ‘gotcha!’ An even bigger ‘gotcha’ is Microsoft’s move to. Where once VBA was available with the installation, now it is not. For VBA to run on AutoCAD, you will need to install more software – the VBA Enabler. I do see the ‘writing on the wall’ that VBA is on its way out. While I do not think AutoLISP is going away. So, once again, the idea of ‘complexity.’īut wait, there’s more. For example, tying a spreadsheet to AutoCAD is very easy. But, slowly but surely found myself working more and more with VBA because of the VBA Editor and cross-applications capabilities. For the longest time, I used VBA for the GUI, and tied AutoLISP/Visual Lisp underneath.

And again, for developing a user interface, it is so much easier. Wait, now I have introduced VBA! Some would say, VBA is the next logical step beyond AutoLISP/Visual Lisp. Visual Lisp can be said to be the VBA enabled version of AutoLISP.

Visual Lisp may be the answer which really opened up the ObjectARX COM model. The more complex the programming requirement, the more you will find that you just can’t get there from AutoLISP. ‘Easy’ though can also be a bit ‘clunky,’ particularly using DCLs when a GUI is needed. If all I wanted to do was draw a line ‘programmatically’ then I would go the easiest route with AutoLISP. With that said, if you want to customize AutoCAD, which language should you learn? In a past blog post, I showed how you could draw a line several ways using Scripts, AutoLISP, VBA and then C#.NET. I am going to state right up front, this is my personal opinion.

Best autocad lisp