Where to get Intercom?
I was looking at whether I could do some automation, and see several references in the forums and blogs to a utility called Intercom, but for the life of me I can't find any details on where to find it. All the download links that use it seem to be broken (eg. https://rpgmaps.profantasy.com/interfacing-with-cc3-via-intercom/ -> http://leesaunders.net/examples/blog/csIntercom.zip). Is there any information out there about this intercom.dll, or how it was developed?
Comments
Looks like it's an old windows 7 dll which worked using netframe, autocad and VB6
https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/net/installing-a-net-intercom-dll/td-p/1435205
Intercom is a technology that allows you to inject command lines into CC3+ from an external command. I strongly recommend against it not because it doesn't work, but because it's painful to debug any errors. You can get the same general effect by writing a script (a text file) that you open with the SCRIPT command in CC3+.
If you really want information on pursuing using Intercom with CC3+, I can provide that information from a C context (the short version is that you open a memory-mapped block to hold the command and then send WM_USER+6700 as notifications the window listed in that block and the whole thing is incredibly fragile if there's more than one CC3+ instance or Intercom client active at once).
The information that Jeff B mentioned looks like it is specific to AutoCAD and not to FastCAD/CC3+.
what kind of things would one be able to accomplish with SCRIPT?
More or less the same things you can do manually in CC3+, but you have the advantage of being able to do it in an automated way, and can do simple branching logic and loops. Almost every command in CC3+ have a macro-equivalent, which can be used on the command line, or in a macro, or from a script file, or called via intercom.
Since scripts are just text files with macro commands, they can be generated outside CC3+ if you need to apply more complex logic to the generation, and then just run it inside CC3+. For example, the Traveller sector importer in Cosmographer generates a script file based on the sector data it imports, and then that script is run inside CC3+ drawing the sector item by item. That is one example by automating using SCRIPT.
My tile-based export from annual 129 is also a script (Well, the export part of it anyway, the stitching the tiles back together afterwards is done in an external batch file)
I've attached the intercom files Lee was referring to in his blog article. I am sure he won't mind me reposting them since they were after all linked from an official ProFantasy blog post. As Joe says though, probably not the way to go, but here they are if you want to have a look.