Anyone have good challenge to put forth?
what about a series of challenges over time, that once complete, can be combined to create a suite of applications, or one (much larger) useful utility.
One idea that springs to mind is something that has been floated here before.... a mini EDMS or some form of document management utility.
Spec out what the doc mangement utility would require in terms of functions then issue each one as a challenge.
Once all the challenges are complete, combine them to form the full program, make it free for all swampers and offer it for a nominal fee to outsiders... or free to all participants (whether their routine is chosen or not) and for a nominal fee to anyone else. It would help with the upkeep of the swamp !
Challenge: Routine to create a new database in Access with a table containing a field for each atttribute in a user selected titleblock.
Must prompt user to select titleblock
Must prompt user for name and location of database
Must also add fields for path and filename and ... ?
Challenge: Routine to check if drawing exists in database when closing, if not, prompt user to add to database
Challenge: Routine to save titleblock information back to database when save/close drawing
Challenge: Routine to check if drawing exists in database when opening, if not, then prompt user to add dwg to database
Challenge: Routine to check drawing upon opening and update attribute values in titleblock from database
Challenge: Routine to open drawing from database.
Challenge: Routine to copy file, renaming and relocating in the process
Challenge: Routine to create new table based upon user selection of a block within the drawing.
table must contain a field for all block attributes along with drawing filename and path
etc etc. Obviously it would need to be spec'd out properly, but there's no reason why Swampers could not create a relatively straight forward simple EDMS that could be used by all.
There's something in there for both Lispers and VBA'ers and each challenge in itself is not too difficult, but could have a good learning curve for participants and end up creating an extremely useful utility for alll to enjoy.