AutoLISP Programming

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.

I have read the other reviews and agree with some and disagree with others. This book is an excellent reference, Appendix B is worthe price all by itself. Appendix A *IS* an alphabetized list of all the AutoLISP functions. Although it does not explain *all* uses of *all* functions, I challenge anyone to show me a book that does! A fine book that I have recommended hundreds of times to hundreds of students. When I sit down to write code, this book is always within arm's reach.

I have suggested this book to many people in person and on the internet. It had a little of everything and is very good at introducing the reader to the world of Autolisp. As an experienced programmer of other languages I had many questions of how to go on, but was very pleased with it as an intro book.

This review of AutoLISP Programming: Principles and Techniques by Rawls & Hagen, 1996 ed. is being submitted by Ben Waggoner, an AutoCAD & AutoLISP instructor at Pinellas Technical Education Center, Clearwater, Florida. I decided to use this textbook in my classes for its straightforward reduction of the AutoLISP language to understandable English. Given this book, a computer lab to work in, and minimal instructor guidance, students who have never programmed in any language before can quickly begin to write simple programs to enhance their productivity with AutoCAD. Simple exercises both introduce the beginner to AutoLISP and at the same time start him/her thinking about "how this might be expanded just a little" to become extremely useful in a work situation. The text covers some fundamentals of programming that can be carried over into any language one might tackle later (such as good documentation and error-trapping), and these practices are demonstrated in the sample programs. The lessons (chapters) are organized logically in bite-size portions, and have "professional tips" that students can keep in mind as they advance through the exercises. In addition, the book has several appendices of important information for AutoLISP programmers. Tables of DXF codes and a quick-reference for functions are vital for programmers (one can't possibly remember *everything*) but are left out of many books claiming to be AutoLISP references. However, Rawls & Hagen did include them, so I feel that my students are not just buying a textbook for class, but a reference they can continue to use as they cultivate their programming abilities. With that said, I do have a complaint about this book. "Misteaks" happen in publishing, don't you know, but given that this was presented to the market as a potential textbook, I felt it should be held to a little higher standard than the average dime-store novel. There is a glaring ommission: the ENTDEL function is included in both the index and in the function-reference, but does not appear on the page the index points to, or anywhere else in the book, that I have seen. To avoid embarrassment, teachers should be aware of this before they tell a student to "look it up..." In addition, the TEXTBOX function is included in the entities chapter of the book, but you have to discover that through the function- reference appendix as it did not make it into the index. The coverage of ENTMAKE could have been more thorough, and delved deeper into creating *complex* entities. However, those are only three functions out of the almost 300 available in AutoLISP under AutoCAD r13. While there are a few other minor errors, they are forgiveable, given the two chapters on dialog box programming and the inclusion of a chapter on debugging effectively and error-trapping. Hopefully the edition for AutoCAD r14 will be completely error-free. I adopted this textbook for my class some time ago and recommend it with very few reser

This book provides practical and easy to follow instruction in learning to master the AutoLISP programming language. A step-by-step approach is followed throughout the text to allow progressive learning, with frequent exercises and end-of-chapter tests that reinforce the topics to insure maxiumum comprehension of the information presented. This book is *highly recommended* for beginning to intermediate level AutoLISP students and professionals.