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The Future of Third Party Dev


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Greetings All,

So I stumbled upon an XML file in the location below that stores information on the color coding of the Script Editor Window in vectorworks. Called "scripteditsettings.xml"

C:\Program Files\Vectorworks 2016\Plug-Ins\Common\Data

Playing around with values in that XML file allows me to change the color coding in the Script Editor Window. Mildly interesting.

I'm wondering why this wasn't documented or made known? Or maybe I'm just "out of the loop" of dev things.

So I was curious, as I'm wanting to get into developing plugins for VW, is there an avenue that developers take (like separate information streams eg Dev Newsletters etc) to get this info? Or is it just trial and error?

Questions I have are:

1. Are there upcoming changes to the Python/VW calls in the 2017 VW that other third party devs know about that the general userbase doesnt?

2. If so how do we find out about this type of info, to prepare for the coming releases?

Thanks

Tui

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So I was curious, as I'm wanting to get into developing plugins for VW, is there an avenue that developers take (like separate information streams eg Dev Newsletters etc) to get this info? Or is it just trial and error?

Trial and error, the information is rather scarce but you can enlist for several specific mailing lists used by developers.

Chances are some of your questions have already be answered on this forum, or on the mailing list which you can browse/search for past posts as well.

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The xml file you stumbled upon probably wasn't documented because it wasn't necessarily designed to be exposed to the user. Vectorworks is built on a plug-in model in order to accommodate a variety of industry-specific tools, and storage of xml data is one way individual plug-in modules can store data. Possibly this file is external so it can be localized by various distributors, or possibly script editor color preferences is a feature on the roadmap but not implemented in 2016.

Things like these aren't on some secret developer documentation -- more than likely they are documented internally for the engineering group working on the feature, and it hadn't occurred to them to provide public access.

A good many constants are documented in the SDK, but they are the same values for VS and python. MiniCadCallbacks.h, for example, provides all the values for preference and object variable calls. Keeping a copy of the SDK on hand can be a useful reference, and diffing versions can be the most effective way to discover new capabilities.

-Josh

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