ACME arose from a need to better regulate the integration between CAD programs on the one hand and LISP applications on the other.

ACME is an “autoloader”, the connection between the CAD program on the one hand and LISP applications on the other.

What ACME does is to arrange settings in one go that would otherwise be repeated for each individual application. This includes checking and loading menus, adapting search paths and “TRUSTEDPATHS” and calling LISP code.

An application can instruct ACME in a few lines where LISP and menu files are located and when they need to be loaded. Those instructions are in an .ACME file.

The way to load applications via .ACME files is the same for AutoCAD and BricsCAD, which further simplifies application writing and makes migrations from AutoCAD to BricsCAD manageable.

ACME starts itself as an app in AutoCAD with just one hook. For BricsCAD, ACME also includes one hook in on_doc_load.lsp. LISP applications are therefore no longer dependent on the CAD program used and on the Autodesk app environment.

ACME documentation is available online at https://nedcad.nl/en/cadchup-acme/.