Free Samples
by: Paul Li
Free Samples– The Horse Edition
THE HORSE STANCE
With the Chinese Lunar calendar 2026 is the Year of the Horse. Riding on such a majestic creature invokes emotions of both awe and wonder. I had a chance to witness this up close and personal on a hiking trail while walking my dog. My over 60 pound dog just trembled in fear as this giant four legged creature slowly trotted passed us with the rider straddled over the saddle at about 4 to 5 feet off the ground. I was then immediately reminded of the so called “horse stance” (pronounced in Chinese as “Ma Bu”). This term is used to represent the foundational stance in Chinese martial arts mimicking the rider’s firmly straddled position over the horse. With an established horse stance you can build immense leg strength, stability, and mental focus. Likewise with AutoCAD, it’s extremely important to have a good foundational knowledge of the commands available to help you use the tool efficiently. One way to learn more AutoCAD commands is to uncover the many open source lisp routines that come installed free of charge with each version of AutoCAD. These lisp routines create additional command functions enhancing AutoCAD’s productivity and value. 46 AUGIWORLD Magazine | April 2026
FREE STUFF
With this article I’m going to continue the “Free Samples” series by focusing on three open source lisp routines that were introduced in different versions of AutoCAD. Like my previous “Free Samples” articles, I’ll first introduce the lisp command, explain what it does and discuss what came of it as AutoCAD continues to develop to the current version.
1) 3D.LSP
After AutoLISP was introduced in January 1986 with release 2.18, in less than a year and a half by April of 1987, free lisp routines like 3d.lsp “galloped” onto the scene to accompany the new AutoCAD release 2.6. At this point in time, AutoCAD was at its infancy attempting to break into the personal computer market and promote itself as a competitive two dimensional (2d) drafting tool. But Autodesk may have also foreseen the need to promote AutoCAD as a legitimate future powerhouse three dimensional (3d) design contender. Perhaps 3d.lsp was included to provide the commands needed to start the road down this visualization journey. With this first release, 3d.lsp added the following commands to augi.com