Documenting my journey to understanding AutoDesk's Visual LISP.

This is intended to be a resource document for ordinary people interested in Visual LISP (aka: AutoLISP, or incorrectly, just LISP). My hope is that others may benefit from the effort.

I now know Visual LISP and AutoLISP are not exactly the same thing. Visual LISP replaced AutoLISP with AutoCAD R2000. If you're using AutoCAD R14 or earlier (why?), you have AutoLISP. The rest of us are all using Visual Lisp (VLisp) even though the term 'AutoLISP' is still hanging around.

When we say Visual LISP replaced AutoLISP, it's not that AutoLISP died. Visual LISP incorporated and expanded AutoLISP by adding a whole slew of ' vl-* ' functions. If you want to know more, it's worth a google.

Now that I know this, I'll change my evil ways and start using VLisp when talking about the language. Or not.

Resources I find indispensable.
1 - The overall Developers' Guide
2 - The Functions Reference
3 - Lee Mac's Error Codes List
4 - David Stein's Developers' Bible 2003 Edition (downloads PDF)
There will be more . . .

Chronological Index of Posts
1 - Starting Simple: The Rectangle.
2 - I Have to Know: What is mapcar?
3 - Blocks and Attributes
4 - Dissecting Blocks
5 - The Magic of Nearby Block Attributes