For many years there has been a rather undocumented (read-only) information powerhouse living within the Autodesk Fabrication package. I have even found references to its existence dating back to 2004. Unfortunately, I must admit that I had been doing many things in a much less accurate and more difficult way than I needed to, prior to diving into this. This powerhouse is the Fabrication List Setup tool. Fabrication utilizes DXF Group Code 300 to store Fabrication properties, and List Setup, defines which properties are shown in the 300 group code. This post will document the List Setup dialog, why I prefer it as a primary source of information for Fabrication parts, its limitations and some philosophical ways to use it properly. Before I dive too much into this topic I need to make a quick disclaimer. I am fully aware of the recently added .Net interface for Autodesk Fabrication and know that it is a powerful tool, but here is the crux…. I went to Autodesk University and sat throu...

AutoLisp is a very convenient tool for making custom commands and automating tasks, but there are some trade-offs that are made when working with the convenience of the built in Visual Lisp IDE. One limitation is using Autolisp to perform functions in an MDI environment (Multiple Document Interface). This can make doing some tasks on multiple drawings very slow for large documents, or impossible depending on the task that is being performed. Let’s say for example that you need to detach all Xref’s from a list of DWG’s. I know what you’re thinking, “Well I’ll just use scripting”. While this does work, depending on the size of the DWG, number of DWG’s and size/number of Xref’s that need to be detached, it could potentially bind up AutoCAD on your machine for quite some time. Another solution to this would be using .NET. .NET is an efficient solution, and a very powerful tool, but in my opinion being able to use the VLIDE inside of AutoCAD is much more convenient to write something f...

A while back I was reading the Autodesk Fabrication Idea Station and I saw a request that caught my eye. I think the reason why it stood out was because it was so obvious. I actually immediately went to work making the idea a reality. I think the requested function took all of about 15 minutes to build and test. I figured anything that took me a few minutes wasn’t worth hording and now I am sharing it here. If you are a Fabrication user, then you’ve probably used SL1 many times a day ever since learning it existed. What this function does is isolate all objects on specified services based on a selection set. It works great and fabrication is chalk full of useful visibility tools, but for some reason they left this particular void in the software. Let’s look at the code. You can click the image to download the lsp file. Now that we have the code, let’s talk about what I did to accomplish this and some of the subtle, but helpful behaviors I embedded in there. Note that the attache...

I’d like to start by saying that this project has been a smashing success. Despite the seemingly insurmountable list of problems that could and did arise on a project of this magnitude, we have managed to create a fully functional, customizable, and efficient platform to generate 2D or single line isometric drawings. We are using a combination of MAP scripting and LISP to generate PCF files directly from Autodesk Fabrication model content. This project started purely out of necessity. A directive was received from our project management team to produce 700-800 additional isometric fabrication drawings without impacting project schedule or budget, all while utilizing the tools and software currently available. This would typically add approximately 500-2000 additional man-hours to a project and would certainly impact the schedule. Fortunately, we are creative thinkers who were up to the challenge. The level of experience in Autodesk Fabrication CADmep in our department is impressiv...

If you have ever been given a Revit model and tried to get a leg up on your job using ProcessRun, then you have known true frustration. It isn’t perfect, but it is a truly epic tool that can directly affect the profitability of a project these days. I recently received a Revit model for a biopharmaceutical project and I honestly don’t even know how they managed to get so many things slightly out of skew. We found that it was producing a DesignLine object for us, but the majority simply wouldn’t fill due to a poor quality of design in Revit. Even the portions that did fill were not what I would consider it a valid starting point for designers. I had been listening to the outcry of detailers for a few days and finally got around to looking into why they were losing their minds. I get it now, but what can we actually do with a DesignLine object? It has absolutely no useful VLA exposures, no Scripting context or even any .Net API methods. It seems like all you can do is throw your hand...