Intranet to AutoCAD command line??

[tedg]

Ok, I have no idea what I'm asking, so please excuse the stupid question(s).

We have a company intranet that has allot of project scheduling, management stuff.
Also, we've been placing information and links to our cadd standards, cadd support, tips and tricks, and lisp routines. Besides being able to send the user to where the lisp routines are, we want to be able to have someone hit a button on the intranet and have it appload a lisp routine on their computer while in Autocad.

Can this be done?

I'm imagining someone looking on the intranet at the routines, and saying "hey, I'll try that one" and hitting a button. This could put them into their already opened Autocad session and load the routine waiting for the command to use it.

The fellow who's been setting it up doesn't know enough about how to link the two so I'm asking this for him.

Can anyone give me any information?
Please remember, I have no idea, so you'll need to be as specific as you can.
I'm not sure how much the one setting up the intranet knows either, but apparently he know a bit of visual basic.

Thanks in advance.

[Ed Jobe]

If it was on an ftp site, they can just drag it to acad and it will run. Aside from that, its possible, but with the security built into IE, it prevents you from running code that would do things like that. You would have to write some vb and then, to get it to run, bypass your network security. I used to have a cad users site on the intranet. It was more of a help file for stuff I wrote. It showed them how to use it and where to find it, what the button looked like, etc. If they wanted to use it, they just switched back to acad.

[tedg]

Thanks Ed, I was hoping we could come up with some cool way of just "loading it".

I'll pass this along to the intranet guy, but I think the problem is he doesn't know how to do this:

You would have to write some vb and then, to get it to run, bypass your network security.

This is what I was thinking:

...to have a cad users site on the intranet. It was more of a help file for stuff I wrote. It showed them how to use it and where to find it, what the button looked like, etc. If they wanted to use it, they just switched back to acad.

....but with that little extra of being able to hit a link and run it.

[dgorsman]

Won't the "Hey, I'll try that one" method result in users using different methods, ending up with different results? If they need it, should it not just be loaded automatically? LISP is only applicable to AutoCAD so it should be done inside AutoCAD rather than a global page (what happens if AutoCAD isn't running, or the wrong profile is current, or... you get the picture). There is also consistency problems with users loading new functions partway through a drawing.

If you have a local-mirror type CAD support file set-up where files are copied locally when the user logs in/out/whenever, you could provide a interface to a preferences list which controls which optional files to copy down/purge. For a network-centric type set-up, the list could handle the load process at start-up. Either way, having users select which support files they load, whether at start-up or partway through a drawing, is going to cause problems with consistency.

[tedg]

Won't the "Hey, I'll try that one" method result in users using different methods, ending up with different results? If they need it, should it not just be loaded automatically? LISP is only applicable to AutoCAD so it should be done inside AutoCAD rather than a global page (what happens if AutoCAD isn't running, or the wrong profile is current, or... you get the picture). There is also consistency problems with users loading new functions partway through a drawing.

If you have a local-mirror type CAD support file set-up where files are copied locally when the user logs in/out/whenever, you could provide a interface to a preferences list which controls which optional files to copy down/purge. For a network-centric type set-up, the list could handle the load process at start-up. Either way, having users select which support files they load, whether at start-up or partway through a drawing, is going to cause problems with consistency.

You have good points.
I guess the intent for the "hey, I'll try that one" is for non-experienced lisp users to use a lisp routine with out having them path all the support folders or add it on start up. If they want to use it all the time, it would get loaded properly.

More like a sampling of the routine.

[Ed Jobe]

More like a sampling of the routine.

Create an screen capture, wmv, etc.

[Ed Jobe]

Thanks Ed, I was hoping we could come up with some cool way of just "loading it".

I'll pass this along to the intranet guy, but I think the problem is he doesn't know how to do this:


This is what I was thinking:

....but with that little extra of being able to hit a link and run it.

First question is, do they want to bypass network security? Second, is it worth it? This is the type of thing that you could put a lot of labor into implementing it and then the users rarely, if ever use it.

[B_Roche]

Ok, I have no idea what I'm asking, so please excuse the stupid question(s).

.... Besides being able to send the user to where the lisp routines are, we want to be able to have someone hit a button on the intranet and have it appload a lisp routine on their computer while in Autocad.

Ive written ActiveX (VB) for web pages that have done a little bit of everything, and was previously able to use the Local Intranet settings to set the Intranet page as 'safe', but also discovered that Microsoft is still patching security holes in that area; I had one project (that accessed databases using OLE/Access 97) become instantly unusable because of an 'upgrade' in which MS decided that ALL access 97 OLE calls thru activeX were now verboten. Users who ran MSUpdate were instantly unable to use the program anymore, and no error code was returned on what the problem was.

I cant say that your particular project would have that trouble; only that my whole experience with it left a bad taste in my mouth.

I'm fairly certain it can be done, but for peace of mind, you'd either have to get it digitally signed ($$) or bypass the activex security altogether (which MS itself has posted code on how to do!)

A third option, which comes to mind, which Ive never tried, might be to use VBScript, in the page, which opens up another can of worms....