It's a new year and many are back to work—some are still in the holiday mood while others are moving busily ahead with their regular work. As for me, I'm going to start writing slowly and gain momentum later.
In this article, I’ll focus on a tool developed at Autodesk Labs and related to AutoCAD called CommandComplete Bonus Tool.
With ever-increasing software capabilities, the number of tools and commands is increasing as well. This leads to various problems such as how to remember all these tools! If there is a method by which you can identify them easily, then as a software developer you have satisfied your customer base. This is exactly what Autodesk has done with CommandComplete, which provides easy access to more than 1,400 commands and system variables. Sound interesting? Let’s get started.
Step 1: Visit Autodesk Labs and select the option CommandComplete from the Utilities list or from under the Technologies drop-down menu.
Step 2: Click on Download. Read the Autodesk Labs Terms of Use. Click on Download at the bottom of this page.
Step 3: Once you are done with step 2, extract the zip file which includes a folder named Command Complete.
- AsdkCommandComplete (arx file)
- AsdkCommandComplete_64 (arx file)
- Commandcomplete (xml file)
- Read_Me_First (txt file)
The extensions arx is Object Arx and xml – Extensible Mark up Language.
Step 4: Open AutoCAD 2008/2007 and click on the tools menu bar and select load application, as shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1
Step 5: You will be prompted to select the file AsdkCommandComplete.arx file as shown below. If you are using 64 bit, then choose AsdkCommandComplete_64.arx.
Figure 2
Step 6: Once you have selected the file and clicked on load, the CommandComplete module will be initiated in AutoCAD. Alternatively you can load the file by typing appload from the command prompt.
Step 7: To automatically load the application, you may add the file to Appload Startup Suite or create an acad.rx file and add the file name in it, as shown in Figure 3.
Figure 3
Step 8: Now right-click on the GUI area in AutoCAD to open the command complete tool, as shown in Figure 4.
Figure 4
Step 9: Now as the user starts typing in the command prompt, a popup list appears displaying the list of commands and sysvars that match the input, as shown in Figure 5.
Figure 5
Step 10: There are different ways by which the user can search for a command as listed below:
- Start with user typed string
- Anywhere search
- Keyword search
You can activate or deactivate the CommandComplete tool from the AutoCAD context menu -> CommandComplete Options.
Note: The CommandComplete options menu is added to the AutoCAD default context menu. The CommandComplete Options are listed below:
- Enable CComplete – Turns the CommandComplete utility on or off.
- Enable Tooltips – Turns CommandComplete Tooltips on or off.
- Commands – Include or exclude commands from the CommandComplete list.
- System Variables – Include or exclude system variables from the CommandComplete list.
Step 11: CommandComplete helps you to alter the standard AutoCAD keyboard behavior in a simple way. You can use the UP and DOWN arrow keys to scroll the list and TAB or double-click on the list to use the selected command. CTRL + SPACE can be used to display the complete list of commands.
Step 12: The command complete uses the commandcomplete.xml file. This file can be edited in any standard editor like Notepad or WordPad to add custom text or tool tip information. The standard format of the .xml file is shown below.
<CommandComplete>
<CommandCollection>
---------------------------------------
<Command id="355" displayname="LINE" commandstring="LINE" tooltip="Creates straight line segments" keywords="" sysvar="0"/>
---------------------------------------
</CommandCollection>
</CommandComplete>
Note: You can edit these command lines to display as required.
- id – Identification number of the command in the list.
- displayname – Name of the command as displayed in the auto-complete list.
- commandstring – Search string used to search for the command.
- tooltip – Tooltip to be displayed for the command (The value of sysvar is also displayed if it is a sysvar).
- keywords – Additional string that can optionally be included in the CommandComplete search.
- sysvar – Identifier to know if it is a system variable. Set to “1” for a sysvar, otherwise to “0."
Note: Commands added by external ARX/.NET modules are always searched based on their global names.
I’ll see you next month with some more usage information for Autodesk products. In the meantime, I’m still in the holiday mood!
(Discuss this Article! in the HotNews Discussion Forums.)
Sunith Babu, President of the AutoCAD Local User Group Bangalore and one of the Board of Director for AUGI India Chapter, Sunith currently works for
M.S. Ramaiah Institute of Technology (MSRIT) www.msrit.edu, a leading Autonomous Educational Institution at Bangalore, Karnataka. He has conducted numerous training programs related to CAD/CAM/CAE and Autodesk products since 2003 to both staff and students from various colleges across India and regularly conducts ATP (AUGI Training Program) for students, staff, and working professionals at www.augi.com. He is an active and supportive member of AUGI and is currently working on projects related to Autodesk Inventor. He is a member of Autodesk Developer Network (ADN) and can be contacted at sunith.babu@augi.com.
