A must to get started in AutoLisp
I had been working with Autocad for awhile and I always wanted
get to the next level: Customization. All the material
I had researched was for intermediate to advanced levels.
I needed something to get me started and would reward me by
allowing me to get a simple function to work. If you are new
to programming this is the book. Once you take off and get a
better understanding you can always get more information from other sources.
Do your homework and this book will get you there.
AutoLISP Programming Principles and Techniques Rawls/Hagen
I am AutoCAD Programming instructor at a technical college and have used this book for several semesters.
The book is a good reference reference with a good DCL section however I feel it is lacking in "real world" applications.
Also it needs to be updates to include visual lisp functions.
Where are the solutions
While I found this book very helpful in introducing me to AutoLISP and the exercises are educational & informative, I have two major problems with this book. First, the solutions to the exercises don't exists; there are several exercises I was unable to do successfully after various attempts and there was no solution to help me understand what I was doing wrong. Second, there is no way to contact the authors when the above mentioned situation arises. If they write further additions I hope they will address these issues. I would not recommend this book to a beginner, but it might be helpful to intermediate or advanced users.
Out of the Classroom
I took AutoLISP at Austin Community College and was given instructural materials. Although good, they were not as in depth as I needed them to be. The instructor used this book as a reference and recommended it to me as I do to others. It is a wonderful book full of information far beyond what I learned in class and has the necessary group codes and functions as well as other invaluable information listed in the appendix.
Great Intro book
I taught myself AutoLISP from this book. I was not a seasoned programmer when I started, only a seasoned ACAD user. I had always wanted to learn AutoLISP, but the AutoLISP tutorial within ACAD--the garden path with tiles--made me feel stupid because I couldn't learn from it. This book was what I was looking for. It starts simple, so I gained confidence as I went. It moves at the right pace, and it covers not so easy concepts, like LAMBDA and MAPCAR. By the end I felt very confident with AutoLISP. Today, it is literally within arm's reach as I write this review. I highly recommend it as a way to learn AutoLISP.
(12 reviews)
