Autolisp and Civil 3D

[abain.117305]

Does anyone know if autolisp routines that work with Land Desktop 2006 will work with Civil 3D? My company is planning on upgrading to Civil 3D later this year and I'm wondering if I'm going to have to do a lot of program updating.

[sinc]

Yes and no.

Civil-3D and Land Desktop are two completely different programs. So all Lisp functions that use ONLY the base Autocad functionality should also work in C3D, although there may be caveats when working with C3D entities.

As far as Lisp routines specifically written for Land Desktop and using Land Desktop functionality, count on none of those working. Many will now be unnecessary. Others you may want to convert to work with C3D. And you'll probably come up with new ones for C3D that you didn't have for Land Desktop.

As far as Lisp (and VBA) programming in general, though, that's being deprecated in many ways, in favor of .NET programming. I'm sure Lisp and VBA will still be supported for the foreseeable future, but Autodesk seems to be focusing primarily on the .NET stuff. The .NET interface is still lacking some pieces, and it's still necessary to use COM objects mixed in with the .NET objects occasionally, but it's getting better, and the complex stuff is much easier to implement in .NET than in Lisp. I would recommend using the transition to C3D as an opportunity to break the link with Lisp, and start out using .NET instead.

[abain.117305]

Thanks for the insight. When you say .NET programming, would that be like VB.NET or is this another animal?

[sinc]

Thanks for the insight. When you say .NET programming, would that be like VB.NET or is this another animal?

That's one. I prefer C#.NET, but they're pretty similar. The .NET part is the same for both.