Every good developer is constantly evolving and learning new technologies. This can be a challenge when you’re hard at work in maintenance mode on familiar technology or when your every day needs don’t go as deeply into topics as you would like.
If you take a step back and look at AutoCAD and ObjectARX – its a huge body of work and it is a challenge to get experience in all the various parts of it. The recent request I received on how to control the AutoCAD ribbon from Visual Lisp or the command line and the subsequent research, code and blog post I wrote made me think, what if I solicited small problems from the AutoCAD community that could make fun little 4 hour research projects. These would allow me to dig into various portions of ObjectARX.NET once a week, write some fun code, and give me things to write about. Everybody wins!
I’m looking to spend about 4-6 hours on each question. I’m hoping to do one question per week, assuming I get enough requests. I’ll provide the full source and project with each post. All code will be written in c#. Some examples of valid requests would be:
- Submit a Visual Lisp routine to convert to ObjectARX.NET.
- Request a particular routine that does some sort of drawing clean up or modifies something.
- Identify some functionality that is missing in AutoCAD.
- Request a piece of sample code explaining how to use API x of ObjectARX.NET or Mapguide Enterprise/Open Source.
The Do’s
- Please keep your request realistic. I’ve only got 4 to 6 hours and you’re not paying me =)
- Please submit specific functionality along with sample data.
- Please be available to answer any questions I might have via e-mail, phone/skype or possibly gotomeeting.
- Please keep the underlying technology somewhat current. Don’ t request AutoCAD/Mapguide 2007.
- Please review my code and comment if you see something wrong or that I could do more efficiently. This is about me learning and I’m gonna make mistakes.
The Don’ts
- Don’t expect days worth of work, I just don’t have that much spare time.
- Don’t ask me to work on your project (unless of course you want to hire my team via ChasmTech).
- Please don’t get upset if I don’t pick your question.
- I did my ten odd years in the trenches writing Visual Lisp – I don’t really want to write any more, so please don’t ask for lisp code.
- Don’t be a ass. I don’t have time for asses.
Let’s See What Happens
So I have no idea how this will play out. I don’t know if 4-6 hours is a reasonable amount of time to allocate each week to do this right. I don’t know if I will be able to make the time every week. Maybe I’ll change it from “Question of the Week” to “Question of the Every Second Week”. I’m going to put this out there and see what happens. I reserve the right to change anything and everything! s E-mail your requests to contact ~@~ geospecialling dot com.