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So did you ever figure out how to do it, OP? I don't know how someone doesn't manually save like every 5 min. I can tell now that this is not a natural reaction for everyone. I am a millennial and it's been metaphorically beaten in my head throughout my all school years to save often. I save after every small bit of changes that I make. Hope you found a way that works for you, though!!

Hello everyone, I've just finished developing MPL (Multi Plot Layout/Model), a free AutoLISP tool that helps you batch print drawings in AutoCAD. Main Features MPL includes all the essential functions found in other batch plotting LISP tools, plus several improvements: Smart and intuitive DCL interface Merge all plots into a single PDF (no additional software or virtual PDF printer required) Automatically open the output file or folder after plotting, with customizable file name and save location Zone-based plotting – organize messy drawings and print them in the correct order based on defined zones Batch plot multiple layouts – rearrange the printing order of layout tabs without dragging the tabs at the bottom of AutoCAD Print Preview mode Add Selection feature – easily add more drawings to the current print list without starting over Export/Import plot configuration for quick reuse Download and user guide: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1WwmkXVgHFWTy8zIhARJYCH_G2OC2A_3D?usp=sharing Feel free to download it, give it a try, and let me know your feedback. Your suggestions will help improve MPL even further!

You have to make two Field, once for Distance of Block, then Once for Arrray Object (item or column * row). Cause an Array Object now is include all block, all Field of length in per Array is fixed

from pyrx import Ap, Ax, Db, Ed, Ge, Br def getAllFieldsIds(db: Db.Database): ids: list[Db.ObjectId] = [] nod = Db.Dictionary(db.namedObjectsDictionaryId()) fieldListId = nod.getAt("ACAD_FIELDLIST") fieldList = Db.Core.entGet(fieldListId) for fieldItem in fieldList: if fieldItem[0] == 330 and fieldItem[1].isDerivedFrom(Db.Field.desc()): ids.append(fieldItem[1]) return set(ids) @Ap.Command() def doit() -> None: db = Db.curDb() field_ids = getAllFieldsIds(db) for id in field_ids: field = Db.Field(id, Db.OpenMode.kForRead) fmt = field.getFormat() if 'pr3' in fmt: field.upgradeOpen() new_fmt = fmt.replace('pr3', 'pr4') field.setFormat(new_fmt) field.evaluate(Db.FieldEvalContext.kDemand, db) print(f"Updated field format from {fmt} to {new_fmt}")

@CamDuy gave it a try it appears to only look for a text object the OP wants an attribute in a block also to be updated.

Agreed. I am 100% on the side of [turn Autosave OFF] and use one of the many ways to save your data file every time you do something you don't want to lose.

@RobDraw - or 8 more years later ?

I posted this at the swamp, this is pretty cool Proof of concept (V25, V26, V27Beta) - appload BrxBlockManXX.brx - type blockman at the prompt - select a drawing from the directory control - double click or drag a block from the List control to the current drawing - double click the main preview to insert the whole drawing - click the open folder button to add your favorite folder(s) - use the dropdown to navigate to a favorite folder - right click on a dwg to open it let me know if it crashes lol edit, posted the source and binaries here https://github.com/CEXT-Dan/BrxBlockMan

That is cool! But didn't AutoCAD 2027 released something tiny bit similar (project workspace?)

CopyRenameBlockV1-5_byCamDuy.lsp Try using this file. @Nikon

Nice Lisp VicoWang! This looks like a great solution to the dreaded startup suite, some suggestions; Is it possible to have the "Asset Name" be the file name by default? Could the "Version" field default to 0?

We use Civil 3D, so we have more tools. Typically we get a batch of points in state plane coordinates. That means you can draw a line anywhere along the Y axis of those coordinates and get a fairly accurate North. It's not totally accurate because, obviously, that same vertical line is parallel at the ends of your state, which can be hundreds of miles apart. That's what a datum is for, I guess, to reconcile the grid with the surface of the Earth. This seems like a simple problem, but it's a nightmare if you don't have enough data. What I'll typically do is get a screen grab from an aerial map, making sure it's oriented to North, at a known scale, with a graphic scale included. Add that image to the drawing as an Xref at rotation 0. Scale it so that the graphic scale is correct. Then the fun part: find locations that match your drawing and line them up. Then the nightmare part: keep in mind that aerial images aren't always taken from directly above that area, so there's going to be some skew--and you have no way of knowing what that skew factor is. Sometimes you have to decide which points are more important to get right and let the rest be off. There's a command named ALIGN, which is very handy here: pick two or three points from the image and the corresponding points from the drawing; decide whether to scale the image; and watch the magic. With a drone you could get an image from a known spot, but not everyone has access to a drone. Other strategies: look for benchmarks in your drawing. In the US there's a system of markers placed by the Geodetic Survey. Surveyors often begin their locating from a benchmark, geodetic or otherwise. What you're trying to do is find three points that will define a plane. The other strategy only works if you know some property corners or can locate them: get a plat (not a deed, those cost money) for a piece of property. It will include bearings and distances for each border line. That gives you distance and direction between your property corners, so you can define your plane. Of course all these strategies depend on the drawing being in World UCS. You sometimes find a Plan North, and you can create a UCS to match that. Orienting the drawing to some other UCS will lead to problems down the line, I've been there.

Did not look to hard but an obvious one for me was. (setq road-text-layer "Road-Labels") ; The layer where the text numbers will go If layer "Road=labels" does not exist then program will crash, IF does not exist so just "Make" the layer. In lots of code I am writing I will take advantage of a global defun that is in another preloaded lisp, it has a checklayer function. This something like all you would need. (chklayer "Road-Label" 1 "Continous") (setq road-text-layer "Road-Labels") Agree with other post label at mid point, Using vertices can get be returned form a pline that is drawn in wrong direction than you think. Yours (setq current-dist-start (vlax-curve-getDistAtPoint road-entity start-pt)) I have a swap or flip a pline so start direction is from end selected. But using mid solves this. May not need this function if using mid. There is VL get coordinates that returns all the vertice XYZ. (defun helper-find-and-sort-intersections (setq lst (vlax-safearray->list (vlax-variant-value (vla-get-coordinates obj)))) Also this for pline vertice points, thanks to lee--mac. (setq plent (entsel "\nPick rectang")) (if plent (setq co-ord (mapcar 'cdr (vl-remove-if-not '(lambda (x) (= (car x) 10)) (entget (car plent)))))) (princ co-ord) Just another idea when doing add more items to an existing drawing, do a "does the labels exist already" ? If so then get them all and find last label then add one to it. You have a layer name so can ssget MTEXT for that layer. Just me I don't tend to do this, make a list of entities, then process that list. It's a personal preference (while (setq entity (ssname road-ss i)) (setq global:all-roads (cons entity global:all-roads)) (setq i (1+ i)) ) I just act on the current entity returned by the while or a Repeat and do the labelling of that entity. This is sort of double handling the SSGET if you use Pick PIck Pick method the selection set should be in the pick order (setq first-road (car (entsel "\nSelect the FIRST road (from your selection): "))) Otherwise use a Pick and label method it will be fast. The label will appear as fast as you pick. Maybe even a dual method pick and window. Having a bit of a look I think code can be shortened a lot.

@VicoWang I don't do anything with the cloud but I know some of my clients are going that way for various reasons, in the very simple way the Install.lsp works there is no reason why the programs etc can not be loaded to the cloud. You only need correct support paths hopefully set, I don't use the cloud. One other thing is we had laptops where I worked, so when outside in the field the user would select the correct icon on the desktop, we had two icons "In office" and "Out of office" then the correct profile was loaded. The "out of office" would look on the laptop for programs etc, Yes had a slightly different set of menu's. The profile choice is in the ICON properties.

Hello. May I make a suggestion? Perhaps you could simplify the user prompts from this: (setq first-road (car (entsel "\nSelect the FIRST road (from your selection): "))) (setq start-point (getpoint "\nClick near the START point of the first road: ")) to a single prompt: (setq first-road (car (setq es (entsel "\nSelect the FIRST road near the START point (from your selection): "))) start-point (cadr es) ) Also, your code calculates the midpoint based on the number of vertices rather than on the actual distance along the road. You might prefer to place the label at the geometric midpoint by replacing this: (setq mid-param (/ (vlax-curve-getEndParam road-entity) 2.0)) with this: (setq total-dist (vlax-curve-getDistAtParam road-entity (vlax-curve-getEndParam road-entity)) mid-param (vlax-curve-getParamAtDist road-entity (/ total-dist 2.0)) )

Type VC to start. Read it on the command line when loading .VLX.

Watching this whole "AI taking over" debate unfold, I feel like I'm seeing people in our industry fall into three different camps: First, there’s the Spectator. They use AI to generate flashy concept art or write basic emails. It’s pure consumption—cool to look at, but they don't really know how the engine works. Then you have the Skeptical Co-Pilot. This is where I sit for my daily development. You let AI do the heavy lifting for specific, tedious tasks, but you absolutely do not trust it blindly. You sandbox its output and rigorously test it before ever putting it into your actual workflow. Finally, there’s the Blind Believer. This is the whole "AI Agent" crowd trying to run a one-man firm. They type a prompt and expect a flawless final product the next morning. The reality? You have no idea what kind of spaghetti code or geometric garbage is hidden inside that black box, and auditing it takes longer than just doing the work yourself. Speaking of that "skeptical co-pilot" approach, I actually went down a massive rabbit hole with it recently. I was trying to solve a very pragmatic problem: How do we get an LLM to generate hyper-precise CAD geometry without eating up a million tokens and spitting out hallucinated garbage? Natural language just doesn't cut it for drafting. So, I worked with an AI to invent a prototype "Universal Morphological Matrix" (I just call it V-Code). The idea was to strip away all the human linguistic fluff and reduce CAD commands down to an absolute, 256-token hex-based root system. It basically compresses professional CAD knowledge into a tiny "Cosmic Language", which a local interpreter can then unpack back into precise AutoCAD/LISP commands. I pushed the experiment so far that I jokingly asked the AI to use this highly compressed logic to solve the P vs NP math problem. It confidently spit out a bunch of hex codes and claimed it had solved it. Did I believe it? Absolutely not, because I couldn't read its alien derivation track at all, haha! At the end of the day, AI is an incredibly powerful engine. But if you take your hands off the steering wheel and just blindly trust the machine, you're going to crash. It remains a tool exclusively for people who already know exactly what they are doing.

download: https://www.vedacad.com/ type code: A7CEHQ Drawing test MPL: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WgMLRDxaiLchbshI3o_f3WHrV7rHX03e/view?usp=sharing AutoCAD: https://shrinkme.click/Multi_Plot_MPL BricsCAD: https://shrinkme.click/Multi_Plot_MPL_BricsCAD ZwCAD: https://shrinkme.click/Multi_Plot_MPL_ZwCAD

No. In days, long ago, before GPS and AutoCAD, surveys were plotted on paper, and the indication of North was not compulsory. I suspect that the old ways are gradually fading in the light of new technology, but not all surveys, even nowadays, are measured with GPS assistance. In the past I have used the national mapping to check North alignment, but that is usually on the grid projection that is being used. As most survey mapping is drawn on a "flat" sheet of paper, absolute true North is not useful.

Yes need a much better realistic sample dwg with say a couple of different scenarios, array,non array and so on, even different lengths. There is a way of getting array info, you read the 1st object for properties, then the numbers in the row and column values.

You have posted twice about the same topic, as a newbie here there is no need to do that, Admin may decide to merge your two posts together. Made a comment in other post about installing new software.

AI + AutoCAD, Python is the way, connect to agents in AutoCAD’s process space, I connect to LM studio

Set bit 1 of the QAFLAGS system variable (storing the original value and resetting after the command); with bit 1 enabled, the EXPLODE command will accept selection sets when invoked from the LISP API. Alternatively, ensure that this bit is not set and only pass a single entity with no double quotes. The key point is that by controlling the bit, you can ensure consistent behaviour.

a little story : This is the famous Myth of Thamus and Theuth, found in the dialogue Phaedrus by the Greek philosopher Plato (written around 370 BCE). In this text, Plato has his teacher Socrates relate an ancient Egyptian anecdote. Here is how the story unfolds: The Invention The Egyptian god Theuth (Thoth), the deity of inventions, visits Thamus, the king (pharaoh) of Egypt. Theuth presents his various creations, including arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy. Finally, he introduces the written word. Theuth is enthusiastic and claims: "This invention will make the Egyptians wiser and improve their memories. It is a potion for both memory and wisdom!" The Pharaoh's Objection King Thamus is not impressed and responds with deep skepticism. He argues that writing will have the exact opposite effect: Memory loss: People will stop training their memories. By relying on external written characters, they will no longer internalize knowledge. The illusion of wisdom: People will read quantities of information without proper instruction. As a result, they will appear knowledgeable but will actually remain ignorant, becoming conceited and difficult to get along with. The Historical Irony Socrates used this story to argue that spoken dialogue is superior to the written word. He believed text is dead; it cannot answer back or clarify itself when misunderstood. The ultimate irony is that Socrates himself never wrote anything down. The only reason we know this story today is because his student, Plato, wrote it down. This ancient debate resurfaces with every technological leap. The same anxieties were voiced about the printing press, calculators, the internet, and now, Artificial Intelligence (AI).

This particular issue has been in play for a long time. Have you ever gone to a food joint, the power is out, and the staff refuse to prepare food for you because they can't ring it up? Like they've never heard of pencil and paper or making change. If you can't do the basic, human version of your job, you'll be left in the dark (sometimes literally) when the AI can't do its job. Worse, you won't recognize when the AI is making a mistake. Without a real-world backup, and the sense to use it, you're at the mercy of the AI and its hallucinations. It's the height of irresponsibility to replace us with something that needs its hand held all the time in case it has a malfunction.

AI has been around a long time, LLM since the 1990's, LISP was created for AI programming IIRC. It's a tool just like VLIDE, VS Code, etc. for programming. Problem, just like before, people came on to forums often demanding a code, etc. be written to make their life easier instead of learning something on their own to do it themselves. Most forums used to provide help and occasionally a custom code, etc. just like... That's a long list of requests. So now they demand AI to do their demands, those with some abilities have success, those that have great abilities have great success, etc. I know recently a man in Lee County, FL was arrested for a crime committed in or near Jacksonville, FL due to AI facial recognition, done by a third county's AI program, no second looks, no reasonable investigation, the man had never been to Jacksonville and a valid alibi for the time showing such. That's the bigger problem with AI right now, accepting the results without question. From the comments I see everywhere a great many seem tired of the AI everything.

I’m loving AI, it’s allowed me to do stuff that would take months to write in days. Example, this dark mode project to BricsCAD (https://github.com/CEXT-Dan/BrxDarkMenu) would have taken months to research.I had already done some win32 programming in the past, but very little. In short, you kind of have to know what you’re doing to use AI. I read about the Brown university thing where the professor made the students do their exams in class and most of the class failed. Scary! People need to at least learn foundational level stuff before using AI. What if the cloud is down, or you reach your token max, would you be able to go old school and continue? Or just sit there and twiddle your thumbs. With regards to anti-scraping, I see lots of open-source projects moving off GitHub to other places like Codeberg so their projects aren’t scraped, I guess so big companies that use AI don’t end up getting their code. I’m the opposite, I want AI to train on my code (if its open source)

Couple of comments to add: MHUPP mentioned anti-scraping, years ago I had a website and would layer the important images, put together they showed correctly but a left click, copy, paste, gave something like just the yellow and a transparent colour block - had to dig a little deeper to get the original image... so it is something that has happened kind of for years. If it is out there though I don't know if you can have a true anti-scraping system and have it visible to the humans CADTutor, for the future of AutoCAD, I am not concerned - though I am also including the others such as BricsCAD and so on - many of the issues on one system are common to the others and this forum will be relevant for a while yet (15 years please, till I retire...).

Have you tried using a multi-line? This looks like it is comprised of 3 lines (2-continuous either side of a width adjusted polyline). You could mimic this with the three lines, simply offsetting the centerline and changing the ltype to continuous and the width to 0.