Topic: AutoCAD2015 project and Visual Studio Online

[Bert]

Hello fella's,

I was wondering if any of you had experience with any of the following :

Recently started working with AutoCAD 2015, and I created a new project in my Visual Studio 2013 Express by using the 'AutoCAD 2015 .NET project Wizard' .
This wizard allows me to pick my ObjectARX 2015 folder, wich holds my reference dlls.
Also I can specify the AutoCAD executable location, this enables me to debug my project (starts AutoCAD)


So far so good, this works well. I can build my new project, debug it (this launches AutoCAD 2015).

But here's the catch : I've recently got a new colleague and would like to upload this project to 'Visual Studio Online' wich acts like a free version of a Team Foundation server.
Uploading it via source control whent quick and is really easy.

When my colleague downloads the project (checks it out) he gets the message that the references in the project (the 3 autoCAD .dll's are defined in c:\ObjectARX2015\inc folder) are no longer found. This is fixed by redefining these references in the project on his computer. (altough he has the same directory and dll's in place on his computer, the setup between our computers are identical).

References re-defined, we want to debug the project and it no longer recognises AutoCAD 2015 as the startup program. Despite that the project I setup on my computer does work/debugs well. Uploading it to Visual Studio Online still allows me to debug the project and instantly have AutoCAD 2015 start up for debugging.
Just downloading the project from Visual studio Online on a second computer and trying to debug it there makes it lose its 'startup program setting'.

My colleague can however start AutoCAD2015 'stand alone' and choose to debug by 'attaching to process'. But this is not how i'd want it to be setup.
I'd like both computers to be configured and run identically.

We turned the tables, he made a new project via the AutoCAD 2015 wizard. He can build and debug it fine, here AutoCAD starts up when you chose debug->start.
He uploads it to VSO, I grab it on my computer and again, the references to the dlls are lost (altough they are also situated in the same folder on my c: drive) and the setting for autocad to as a startup program seems to have gone lost.

Wow,
thanks for listening to my rant, I hope somebody knows where i can go check whats wrong !

Regards

[Kerry]

Firstly:
You talk of AutoCAD 2015.

The referenced files in the Wizard are to 2012


//-----
I haven't tried Visual studio Online 

[Bert]

yes, very good observation.
In trying to explain the working of the wizard I took a shortcut and posted the image directly from the Autodesk tutorial page :
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=18162797
here an image of a previous version is used.

Rest assured, the project we use got created by the 2015-wizard !

[Jeff H]

Take the autocad dll's and copy them into a folder inside your source control. I create a folder called libs and put them at top level.

[Bert]

That's a good suggestion, will apply it.

However, in the meantime we managed to fix the problem :

I've copied my local projectfolder (the whole lot) onto the network, and then overwrote my colleague's local project folder with it.
This way our local project-folders are a raw copy and now he can debug and have AutoCAD start up whilst doing so !

We do keep working with VSO to sync and work on the same project, but he no longer has a version he acquired via VSO.

[Keith Brown]

Here is the practice that I follow and I have never had any issues.


I place all of my projects into a dropbox folder.  Any cloud syncing technology will probably work however.  Then instead of using visual studio online i use github and/or bitbucket for version control.  I have a paid account over at github but I am slowly moving over to bitbucket because the private repositories are free up to a certain amount of users.


This setup allows me to have all of my projects available on all of my pcs (2 desktops and 2 laptops) and also gives me version control as well as all of the other bells and whistles that github and bitbucket allow.  I have never had an issue and i use the TeamServer controls inside of Visual Studio to commit/sync/push changes to git.  I don't really use pull as I am the only one team member and dropbox takes care of all of the syncing for me.  This setup also allows me to create branches and clone with ease.


P.S.  I would definately dump Visual studio online.  The recent outages alone would cause me to go crazy.

[CADbloke]

it no longer recognises AutoCAD 2015 as the startup program ...
Just downloading the project from Visual studio Online on a second computer and trying to debug it there makes it lose its 'startup program setting'.

Those debug settings are stored in a file called *.csproj.user. You generally don't check this into source control, it is meant to be a local, per user settings file - you should set the startup project and AutoCAD app to run on each computer you clone the repo to.

I have a repo of AutoCAD library DLLs (from 2006 to the latest in a folder for each version because masochist) that I clone into the same place (C:\Codez\z.Libraries\AutoCAD\) on each computer I use so all my projects know where to look. The thing to watch in .csproj files is relative links, Visual Studio loves to convert absolute file paths to relative ones when you look away. This is fine within a solution, not so fine when you're linking to external stuff. You can edit the .csproj file manually...after you've checked in a working version, of course.

My rant on source control is at http://www.theswamp.org/index.php?topic=32381.msg486114#msg486114 - it's Nike - just do it. No, really.