Of course, the real question is whether or not you should upgrade (is this a MAJOR release?) If you are on subscription, it is a no-brainer. But, if you are on 2002 (or less), it becomes more problematic due to the expense.

I can tell you that I have become reliant on many of the features, like Sheet Set Manager and fields, in the latest versions of AutoCAD...and those features simply aren't available (yet) in the competitive products. However, it is becoming more and more difficult to support the expense. The best option for many companies may be to maintain one or two seats of AutoCAD on subscription and put everyone else on a less expensive product, like Cadopia's IntelliCAD...this is what I am doing at the company where I am working in San Jose right now.

Since the SSM API is supposed to be available, I thought it would be easy. Turns out it works fine in VBA, but not in VB. I don't like to use VBA because 1) it requires the user to run the routine from within AutoCAD which might be too hard for some users and 2) I like all the extra oomph I get in VB. (Only wimps use VBA ).

This has been an extremely valuable learning experience and I would like to share some of the things I have learned.

• You can use vl-bb-set and vl-bb-ref to store variable values and pass them from one lisp routine to another, even across drawings.
• If you start a lisp routine in one drawing, then use lisp to open and activate another drawing, you lose or break the lisp routine.
• In order to work in an MDI (multiple document interface), you really need to use VB.
• Fortunately, you can call lisp routines from VB and run them in different drawings.
• You can create a list of layouts in a drawing using (layoutlist).

If I ever get this program to work, I'll be sure to share the code with the rest of you. Thanks to Randall Rath, Tony Tanzillo, and Jimmy Bergmark for their help as I try to get this code functional.

A detector mounted on the robot detects two or more of these spots and triangulates its position and heading (assuming a relatively flat floor). The detectors have a 120° field of view. So in an area with 8-ft ceilings, it takes a pair of spots to cover a 26-ft circular area or a room 18 18 ft square. Range depends on ceiling height, but for an 8-ft ceiling, the detector can extract heading and position 13 ft from room center, assuming the pair of spots are near the center of the ceiling. Accuracy when the robot's odometer is used, is on the order of 6 in. for position and 2° for heading. There's no limit on the number of detector-equipped robots that can simultaneously use the same spots. A detector sends position, heading, what spots it is using (which can identify the room it is in), and the light intensity of up to 20 spots using serial communication protocol. Robots can record positions and return to them later or record obstacles and avoid them.

When I was at NUMMI, I worked with several robots that were used to assemble the trucks. We used sensor detectors mounted on the side of the robot to determine the proximity and the angle. It seems like the Evolution team has taken the idea of sensors and simply built on it.

However, when several people in my office were unable to open my drawing files and couldn't use the Batch Converter to get to them, it became abundantly clear that "Houston, we have a problem!".

My short-term solution has been to distribute ProgeSoftLT IntelliCAD to everybody. The software is free and allows them to view, edit, and plot my AutoCAD 2005 files. However, it is still a bit buggy. I attach 20+ xrefs to my files to create drawing packages and make it easier for me to manage projects. ProgeSoft LT starts hiccuping when the file size goes over a meg. Over 2 megs and it cries "uncle" and hangs up.

My long-term solution is to move everyone over to Cadopia's IntelliCAD. Why not upgrade everyone's seat of AutoCAD? We're talking more than ten seats and paying full price on all of them...that's a huge capitol outlay. It simply doesn't make sense when IntelliCAD does everything AutoCAD does (including running LISP, VB, and custom menus) at a fraction of the cost.

I was expecting the DWGGateway to install on my desktop. It actually installs inside of AutoCAD as a menu item. When it is installed, it is an arx file that AutoCAD auto-loads. It is saved under Program Files/Common Files. This concerns me because I don't really like programs that install inside of other programs - especially my AutoCAD. It also was annoying because it installed just fine in one version of AutoCAD, but in none of the others. I have MDT, ADT, and ACADe on my system, but only one of them has DWGGateway available in it. And I can't get it to load onto any of the other installations.

Another option (which may be so simple and easy many users will say "DOH!") is to change your Save Options. Simply go to the Open and Save tab on your Options dialog and set the set SaveAs to the lowest version of AutoCAD in your office. Then anybody will be able to open the files you save.

Autodesk has released a Hot Fix for users with AutoCAD Mechanical who installed SP1 only to esperience problems. Downloa d it here.

Puget Sound has a new AutoCAD User Group!

Free Visual Lisp Snippets