Setting Up and Running Views Studio on Microsoft Windows Systems

Use the information in this section to set up and run Views Studio on your Microsoft® Windows® system.

Setting the ILVHOME Environment Variable

To launch Views Studio on Microsoft Windows for the first time, you must:

  • Set the environment variable ILVHOME to the root directory where Views was installed.

or

  • Put the line IlvHome=<ViewsDir> in the VIEWS.INI file, where <ViewsDir> is the root directory where Views was installed.

Running Views Studio

Views Foundation Studio, a generic version of Views Studio using dynamic libraries (DLL), is provided in the following directory:

%ILVHOME%\studio\<system>\<subsystem>

To run this editor, set the environment variable PATH to the directory:

%ILVHOME%\lib\<system>\<subsystem>

and

%ILVHOME%\studio\<system>\<subsystem>

where <system> indicates the name of the platform you are using (such as x64_.net2015_14.0) and <subsystem> indicates the name of the subplatform you are using (such as dll_mda).

Loading Plug-Ins

A plug-in is a Views dynamic module that creates a Views Studio extension.

Selecting Plug-Ins

When you use ivfstudio for Views for the first time, ivfstudio prompts you to select the plug-ins it has detected.

Views Studio Plug-Ins Dialog Box (Microsoft® Windows® Systems)

Select the plug-ins you want to load by checking the corresponding toggle buttons. Then click OK. The plug-ins you use in this session will be loaded again the next time you launch ivfstudio.

If you click Cancel, ivfstudio starts without loading any plug-ins.

Using the -selectPlugIns Command Line Argument

If you want to select the plug-ins before ivfstudio starts running, you can launch ivfstudio with the -selectPlugIns argument. The Views Studio Plug-Ins dialog box will appear and you can specify again the plug-ins you want to load.

Using the SelectPlugIns Command

Studio provides you with the SelectPlugIns command that you can use to select plug-ins. To use this command, choose SelectPlugIns from the Tools menu in the Main window. Studio displays the Views Studio Plug-Ins dialog box for you to make your selections. You will then have to exit Studio and launch it again to load the plug-ins you just selected.

Specifying Plug-Ins Using the Environment Variables

You can also specify either a list of the modules you want to load or a directory containing all the modules you want to load. When you do this, the plug-ins loaded in the previous session are ignored.

Upon initialization, Studio loads the extension modules declared in the user's preferences. These preferences can be changed using the Select Plug-ins choice from the Tools menu of Studio. The new choices will be loaded the next time Studio is launched.

You can use the ILVSTPLUGINS environment variable to indicate a list of the modules you want to load. You can specify the full paths or the paths relative to the working directory, separated by a “;” character (a semicolon character).

Common Plug-Ins for Views Studio

Some Views packages come with their own plug-ins for Views Studio. For more information, see the documentation of the Views packages you use.

The following is a list of some common plug-ins located in the %ILVHOME%\studio\<system>\<subsystem> directory:

  • With the Views Gadgets package, you can use the Views Studio GUI Application plug-in to edit GUI applications with gadgets panels. The corresponding dynamic package is smguiapp.dll. You can also use the Views Studio GUI Generation plug-in to generate the C++ code for the GUI part of your application. The corresponding dynamic package is smguigen.dll.

  • With the Views Grapher package, you can use the Views Studio Grapher plug-in to edit your graphers, nodes, and links. The corresponding dynamic package is smgrapher.dll.

  • With the Views Prototypes package, you can use the Views Studio Prototypes plug-in to edit your business graphic objects. The corresponding dynamic package is smproto.dll.

Building Other Executables of Views Studio

If for any reason you have to build an executable of Views Studio, go to the %ILVHOME%\studio\<system>\<subsystem> directory and run the make utility passing the name of the executable you want to build as the only argument.

The provided ivfstudio can be used with plug-ins which bring the capabilities of the other Studio executables you can build.