This guide is designed to help DigiView users get started developing their own custom plug-ins. DigiView users range from pure hardware types to pure software types and every mix in between. Many users have no experience compiling code on the PC while others do nothing else. This guide attempts to minimize the learning curve for all users, regardless of experience.
This section provides a basic tutorial demonstrating building, installing and verifying plug-ins. It starts by building one of the example plug-ins and installing it in DigiView. Next, it walks you through creating a new plug-in based on an existing example. Finally it walks you through customizing that plug-in with new framing and formatting configuration options.
You should have your first basic custom plug-in operational in less than 20 minutes (after installing the tool chain if needed.)
The tutorial seems more involved than it is because we go into extreme detail to assist the absolute beginner. For example, we list 5 steps to copy one file to another. We tell then HOW to copy, rather than just telling you to do it. Experienced programmers would probably just read the section and then do it their way.
There are, of course, several ways to do most things in Windows. Keeping the beginner in mind, we chose to use menu operations rather than the command line or short-cut keys. We also decided to perform all operations within the Visual Studio application rather than File Explorer.
Through-out this Tutorial we will refer to navigating to the <PDK> directory, and 'Launching' the tutorial.dvdat file or the Visual Studio Express Solution file. There are several ways to do each. To avoid repeating ourselves, we will just refer you back to this page and let you decide which method you prefer.
Navigate to the <PDK> directory:
If you accepted the default path during installation, the PDK directory will be located at:
<documents>\TechTools\DigiView\PDK-1-2
Note: Each PDK release is stored in its own directory, based on the version number. Version 1.2 is stored at PDK-1-2. Likewise, version 3.0 would be at PDK-3-0. You can go directly to the PDK directory by:
• selecting 'Start->TechTools->DigiView PDK->Browse PDK Files'
• or by double-clicking on the 'Browse PDK Files' shortcut on your desktop.
DigiView looks for plug-ins in:
<documents>\TechTools\DigiView\plugins
Launch Solution file (CPPExample.sln):
We included a 'Solution' file for Visual Studio express. This contains predefined projects for all of the plug-in examples. We also extend it in the tutorials to include the tutorial project. There are several ways to launch this file:
•Click Start->TechTools->DigiView PDK->CPPExamples.sln
•or Click on the CPPExamples shortcut on your desktop
•or Open Visual Studio Express and select Open->solution. Then navigate to the <PDK Directory> directory and select CPPExamples.sln.
•or Navigate to <PDK Directory> and double-click on CPPExamples.sln
Launch Capture fIle (tutorial.dvdat):
We include a DigiVIew capture file containing a simple state capture. We use it in the tutorials to demonstrate plug-in functionality. There are several ways to launch this file:
•Click Start->TechTools->DigiView PDK->tutorial.dvdat
•or Click on the tutorial.dvdat shortcut on your desktop
•or Open DigiView and select 'Select File to Open'. Then navigate to the <PDK Directory> and Double-click on 'tutorial.dvdat'.
•or Navigate to <PDK Directory> and double-click on tutorial.dvdat
