Mach3 Plugin Tutorial Document and Prototype File Set

[jemmyell]

Hi,

Building on the work of Art, Brian and John Prentice I have written a tutorial that shows the mechanics of getting started with Mach3 plugin development.  If there is sufficient interest I will make this a series.

UPDATE (04/10/08): Please use PluginProto_v01b.zip on this page with this V01 tutorial.  It contains the missing header files that were left out accidentally and Proto.h has added declarations needed to complete the tutorial using the PluginTest dialog and CMyScriptObject.

-James Leonard

[ynneb]

Hi James, you have been very busy. Thanks so much for taking the time to share with us.
You mention "sufficient interest" I am never sure how to gauge peoples interest, given that the old "Ten lepers" story is true. In other words many will benifit, but only a few will let you know that they did.
I guess this is a long winded way of encouraging you to do the series, even if you dont hear back from many people.

Two thumbs up to you.

[poppabear]

Awesome, I am looking forward to manyh more of these!!!

Please continue posting!!!

Any one else that would like to add to the knowlegde base please contribute so we can all learn!!

Scott

[N4NV]

I am trying to go through your tutorial.  When I get to the part of creating CustomPlugin I get error shown in shot2 and my file hierarchy is shot1.  What might I have wrong?

Vince

[jemmyell]

Your file heirarchy is correct.  Are you using VS 2003?  Do you have the service packs applied?

I have never encountered this error personally.  Please tell me at what point that message box pops up.  A detailed list of steps will help a lot.

-James

[N4NV]

Yes, I have VS 2003.  When I click on help , check for updates, it says there are no updates available.  Are the updates the same as service packs?  I get the error when I try to create the new project, CustomPlugin, on page 11.  After I enter the name and hit enter, the error comes up.

Vince

[jemmyell]

It looks like you have a corrupted MS scripting engine.  You can completely uninstall and reinstall VS 2003 or try the fix found here:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/323885

Service pack 1 for VS 2003 can be found here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=69d2219f-ce82-46a5-8aec-072bd4bb955e&DisplayLang=en

Release notes:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;924009#appliesto

and a security patch for it can be found here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=1dd6d8e7-390b-4e02-9f16-ab9d5ef7792e&displaylang=en&tm

-James Leonard

[N4NV]

Thanks for all the links.  I downloaded everything and installed and that fixed the problem.  I can now move on in the tutorial.  I don't know how the average person is supposed to figure all this stuff out.

Vince

[Chaoticone]

I don't know how the average person is supposed to figure all this stuff out.

Dedication and a boat load of want too. 

Thanks a lot for shareing James. As Benny said, you will most likely never know how many you have helped or will help with future tutors. You can see by the number of downloads allready, it will be quite a few. Hats off to James. Great job.

Brett

[Jeff_Birt]

Wow! This is great James and very much appreciated. I just started working on the Galil plugin to get the extended I/O working. Your tutorial has anwered many questions I have had (the biggest being the configuration GUI in the resources file).

I do have one question, on page 8 you say:

To make a plug in of your own you must either use ‘BlankPlugin’ as a starting point or you can use the prototype file set and instructions that I am providing.  This document will only discuss the second method.

What advantage/disadvantage is there to these two choices? While I appreciate knowing how to set up a project 'from scratch' I was wondering what differences there may be for the developer for these two paths.

Thanks,

Jeff