Topic: Charges for updating Lisp macro to Acad 2007: realistic?

[havano]

Some 7 years ago, I did an Autocad project for a customer. I wrote the specs, found a subcommissioner to do the programming (Lisp was and still is Russian to me). I took care of testing and implementing. All parties were very happy.

Last year, the customer reported that the macro didn't work in Acad 2006. The programmers charged 1 day of reprogramming. The customer nor I were very happy.

Last month, the customer reported that the recently updated macro for Acad 2006 didn't work in Acad 2007. The programmers now charge 4 hours of reprogramming. Apparently it has to do with an ARX library that must be rewritten and recompiled for almost every new release of Autocad. The customer and I are very unhappy.

Are these normal consequences of using an AutoLISP macro? If so, my preference of VBA seems justified...

[MP]

Normally one attempts to minimize the impacts of version upgrades so that updating is not required. Alas, Autodesk does change things which sometimes necessitates code maintenance despite defensive programming techniques. Is 1-4 hours of maintenance coding a big deal? It would be if the original programming was in the order of 1-4 hours, but not if it were 100 hours, in other words it's a matter of scale -- how does it compare to the original programming? That said, many consultants would just eat the hours for good clients as a good will gesture, but again, scale.

[LE]

If those routines required an ObjectARX base functions, then it may be right, and yes it is required to be updated per different autocad versions (that's how autodesk works).

[havano]

The message is clear, thx.

[Kerry]

If those routines required an ObjectARX base functions, then it may be right, and yes it is required to be updated per different autocad versions (that's how autodesk works).

Thats not quite correct, ARX will need compiling each major update, which is each 3 years currently.

Is it possible that the Lisp code references a specific build ... ?
... there are several ways that can happen.

[LE]

Thats not quite correct, ARX will need compiling each major update, which is each 3 years currently.

Kerry;

Yes I am talking about that major update - I am thinking that they probably spent the 4 hours doing the adaptation of the code to work with the unicode, now required on A2007.

 

<edit> fixed quote tags.  Maverick