Beginner

If you are just starting out with LISP or AutoLISP programming, then check out the articles in the Beginning AutoLISP categories. These articles will give you a basic understanding of LISP and how to implement it within AutoCAD, BricsCAD, or any other IntelliCAD based CAD program. Be sure to give me your comments and let me know what you like, don’t like or don’t understand on any of these posts.  I want to be helpful as much as possible in order that you can begin to create your own programs to get AutoCAD to do what you want it to.

LISP is a powerful programming language built within AutoCAD and IntelliCAD based CAD programs, that brings supercomputer power to your drafting needs. With LISP any repetitive task can usually be automated to reduce time or improve accuracy.

LISP was developed in 1950’s by John McCarthy and a group at MIT. Large computers were required to handle the possible situations available with the language in the original implementations. Because of this LISP was more or less confined to universities and large research organizations.

AutoLISP is a subset of LISP derived from XLISP (a microcomputer LISP) which is linked to AutoCAD’s Drawing Editor. This gives you the ability to write and (load) programs that may be executed from the command prompt. Drawings may be generated from specification files, or operator satisfied prompts. The only limitation of a LISP application is the programmer’s ability to creatively implement a programmable solution for a given problem within the AutoCAD environment.

LISP is sometimes known as, “Lost in stupid parentheses” due to the fact that it is a parentheses delimited language, that allows functions, atoms and lists to be nested. If you always keep an equal number of open and closed parentheses in every statement you should not find LISP hard to master.