Customization Options
This one is also a biggie for many people. Talk to seasoned AutoCAD users at work or your local user group, and you'll find that their key to happiness is being able to customize AutoCAD so it does what they want with the minimum amount of time or effort. The full version of AutoCAD supports a number of Application Programming Interfaces, or APIs. These include AutoCAD's very own programming language — AutoLISP — and its marginally friendlier sibling Visual LISP, ActiveX Automation, and compiled language programming using ObjectARX or Microsoft's .NET framework.
Although you can do fairly simple customization in AutoCAD LT — for example, creating or modifying toolbars, writing scripts, or using custom hatch patterns or linetypes — none of the higher-level programming described in the preceding paragraph is possible in LT.
Get AutoCAD® 2012 FOR DUMMIES® now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
