ODA at ITC Conference

(Blogged live.) Neil Peterson of the OpenDesign Alliance notes how their latest release of DWGdirect mimics AutoCAD 2007's "trusted" drawing feature.

Drawings saved by the 2007 version of DWGdirect adds the code needed to fool AutoCAD into thinking it is opening drawings created by Autodesk software.

Some of the other new features of DWGdirect:

* Explode entity converts complex objects (3D solids, mlines, mtext) into simpler entities.
* Deep cloning of database objects.
* Support for transient and persistent reactors, such as modify, copy, close, etc.
* Object draw themselves through worldDraw and viewportDraw virtual functions.

But

DRX modules are not binary compatible with ARC, nor can it be compiled as-is. ARX code must be ported to work with DRX; similarly, DRX modules do not work with AutoCAD. Conditional compilations might be one workaround.

On the plus side, a DRX app written for any of the ODA's customers can be used by IntelliCAD, and vice versa. The ODA is working on:

* Diesel support
* Faster clipping
* Support from LISP
* Supporting other apps, such as Civil 3D and Land Desktop.

In other ODA news, Randall Newton reports on Evan Yares no longer heading up the organization: Open Design Alliance Puts Yares on Administrative Leave.