Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
 General information |
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What is ActivVisionTools? | |||
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ActivVisionTools are the outstanding result of MVTec's expert knowledge in machine vision: a quick and efficient application creator with an easy-to-use graphical interface. By directly supporting digital I/O boards, and with more than 25 interfaces to widely-used image acquisition devices, ActivVisionTools can be integrated into any production process. The tools are a set of ActiveX controls with programmable interface. ActivVisionTools' open software architecture is extensible and scalable to always fit your needs. Several tools such as ActivDataCode, ActivOCR, ActivBarcode, ActivMeasure, ActivAlignment, ActivBlobFinder, are based on the established HALCON library. | |
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| ActivVisionTools and HALCON |
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Are there any compatibility problems known with specific versions of ActivVisionTools and HALCON? | |||
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ActivVisionTools 3.2 requires at least HALCON 8.0.2 ActivVisionTools 3.1 requires at least HALCON 7.1.0.1 ActivVisionTools 3.0 requires at least HALCON 7.0.1.1 When installing ActivVisionTools, the designated HALCON version is installed automatically, and we recommend not to change it. However, it is usually no problem to upgrade to a newer maintenance release of HALCON (increase in the third part of the version number). If you wish to install a newer version of HALCON on a system running ActivVisionTools, please contact your local distributor. |
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How is ActivVisionTools related to HALCON? | |||
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See here. | |
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| Internationalization |
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Does the ActivVisionTools GUI support different languages? | |||
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Yes, for an up-to-date list of supported languages see here. | |
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| System Requirements |
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Do I need a specific development environment to use ActivVisionTools? | |||
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ActivVisionTools supports Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0, Visual C++ 6.0, Visual Studio .NET, and Visual Studio 2005. It is also possible to use Visual Studio 2008, with one limitation (see "Adding AVTDataView to the Form does not work in Visual Studio 2008"). Also see "Is it possible to use ActivVisionTools with Delphi?". | |
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Do I need a specific edition of my development environment to use ActivVisionTools? | |||
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No, Standard or Express Editions are already sufficient for using the full functionality of ActivVisionTools. Buf of course, there may be restrictions on the functionality of the development environment, e.g., Visual C++ 2005 Express supports the creation of Windows Forms applications, but not of MFC applications. Regardless of the edition, you need at least version 6.0 for Microsoft Visual Basic or Microsoft Visual C++. | |
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Is it possible to use ActivVisionTools with Delphi? | |||
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Although we do not officially support Delphi, we expect no problems
using those project types of Borland Delphi 2005 or later which target
the Microsoft .NET Framework, i.e. Windows Forms Applications for
either Delphi or C# Builder.
You need to import the ActiveX controls of ActivVisionTools via the
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| Tips and Tricks |
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How to make use of different image processing parameters for each ROI. | |||
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In case that you want to have different image processing parameters for each ROI, you simply use multiple instances of the image processing tool. Then you create each ROI for the instance of the tool with the corresponding parameters. | |
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How to reset all stored values like ROIs. | |||
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Each application of ActivVisionTools uses one file to
store the current status. The file has the same name as the executable
with the extension |
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Loading an ActivVisionTools application takes a very long time. | |||
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On startup, ActivVisionTools perform an autodetection of the available
image acquisition devices, which takes some time.
It is possible to avoid this, by explicitely specifying a list of
frame grabber interfaces. To do so, append the following line to
the file AVTView.nls in the directory %AVTROOT%\nls: AVTView.FGSelection A File;<name> Please make a copy of the file before doing so, and be sure to use the exact spelling and capitalization. Replace <name> with the name of the desired frame grabber interface as specified in the Name selection box in the dialog AVTViewFG. If the entry AVTView.FGSelection already exists, replace the entire line. You can specify multiple names by separating them with semicolons (;). |
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Termination of an ActivVisionTools application takes a very long time. | |||
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If you use ActivDigitalIO in your application, ending the application requires some additional cleaning up, which may cause a few seconds delay before the application actually terminates. | |
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| Trouble Shooting |
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ActivView is disabled when running the application (no popup menu, zoom checkbox grayed out). | |||
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Unless you are seeing further error messages, this is usually caused
by not having a master instance of AVTView in the application. In this
case, set the property IsMasterView to True on an instance of AVTView
at design time. This problem may occur after adding two instances of AVTView and then deleting the master view, but also due to the following behavior: When creating a new ActivVisionTools application after having worked with another ActivVisionTools application previously under Visual Studio .NET (and probably also Visual C++ 6.0), new instances of AVTView will initialize as slave instances if they still find a ghost of the old Master View in the designer process. To avoid this problem, restart Visual Studio before creating a new ActivVisionTools project. |
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Adding a tool to my Form causes the development environment to crash. | |||
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On Windows 2000 and Windows XP, please make sure you have at least Power User privileges. When using .NET, make sure you are a member of the group "Debugger User". Also try to start the demo application ActivViewer, to see if there is a more general problem with the installation. If this also crashes, see the entry "Starting the demo application ActivViewer causes an immediate crash". | |
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Adding AVTDataView to the Form does not work in Visual Studio 2008 | |||
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The component displaying the spread-sheet-like data grid does not work in the Form designer of Visual Studio 2008. This means you cannot add the tools AVTDataView, AVTViewProperties, AVTDecisionViewResults, AVTDecisionViewDefaults, and AVTDIOChannelAssignment to the Form in the Form designer directly. This problem only concerns the designer: All tools work fine at runtime - either by opening dialogs via the popup menu or by adding tools to the Form in code (create using "new AxAVTDataView()", add to the Form using "Form.Controls.Add()", then adapt the properties Left, Top, Width, and Height to position). | |
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After a runtime error Visual Basic always reports a license error. | |||
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In the case of a runtime error Visual Basic loses control of the OCX controls and returns the missleading error message of having no license for the control. The effect is, that no ActivVisionTool can be used any longer. To get rid of this problem, quit Visual Basic and start the project anew. | |
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After creating the application (executable) the program does not display any images. | |||
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When you create an application and define the execution status to application mode (in AVTViewExecute) the default behavior is that AVTView does not display images (to speed up the application). In addition by default the popup menus are disabled. This has the effect that you do not see any images and you cannot change this by activating AVTViewDisplayModes via a popup menu. The solution is either to change the properties DisplayImageAppl and/or UsePopUpAppl before compiling or to add AVTViewExecute to the GUI. | |
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After upgrading ActivVisionTools, my application no longer works. | |||
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Please recompile the application after upgrading ActivVisionTools. | |
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After upgrading ActivVisionTools, my project no longer works. | |||
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The behavior depends both on the old and new ActivVisionTools versions, and on the development environment used. Please refer to the compatibility information in the release notes for more information. | |
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A tool is disabled after being added to a form. | |||
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AVTView must be on the form for the
tools to work correctly. Maybe you added a support tool without the
corresponding master tool. Typical examples are if you add
AVTFeatureCalcBasic without AVTFeatureCalc, or
AVTBlobFinderProcess without AVTBlobFinder. Solution: Add the corresponding master tool. Background: If an ActivVisionTool consists of multiple subtools (i.e., multiple ActiveX controls), one is defined as the so-called master tool, the others are classified as support tools. The master tool is typically named like the ActivVisionTool itself, with "Activ" being replaced by "AVT" (e.g.: ActivView -> AVTView). In the Visual Basic toolbar, the icon of the master tool appears before those of the support tools. All support tools can be opened in user mode via a menu which pops up when clicking on the master tool with the right mouse button. A tool is also disabled if an error occured or the license is missing. In these situations, however, an error box should appear. |
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Attempting to add AVTNETControl to a Form fails with an error message referring to missing Interop.*.dll assemblies. | |||
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AVTNETControl depends on ActivVisionTools wrapper libraries which will be generated by Visual Studio after adding the first tool (i.e., an ActiveX control from the ActivVisionTools library). Therefore, please add AVTView to your application before adding AVTNETControl. Possibly, you might need to remove broken references or restart with a fresh project after you encountered the above problem. | |
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External trigger in AVTViewFG does not work. | |||
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External trigger may not work within the Microsoft Visual Basic environment. You may have to build an EXE file and run it stand-alone to use this functionality. | |
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GUI text is corrupt on systems running traditional Chinese (Taiwan, Hongkong, Macao). | |||
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Due to an installation bug in ActivVisionTools 3.1, language files for simplified Chinese may be installed on systems where traditional Chinese should be used. You need to manually replace the files in the "nls" folder of your ActivVisionTools installation directory (%AVTROOT%). The correct files can be obtained from the installation CD under nls/chinese_traditional, or from your local distributor when using a downloaded WWW installation. | |
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Parameter changes applied in design mode are lost. | |||
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Please note that the design-time functionality of
ActivVisionTools is only available with Visual Basic 6.0. With
Visual C++ or Visual Studio .NET, please change the parameters
when the application is running. Properties which are not available
in the normal GUI can be set via AVTViewProperties. If you are experiencing this problem with Visual Basic 6.0, check if the Project Manager Add-In is loaded. If not, try to register it manually. This can be done by typing "regsvr32 <avt-install-dir>\bin\i586-nt4\AVTProjectManager.dll" in the Run dialog box or the command shell. |
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Reference manual displays "The page can not be displayed" | |||
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A security feature of Windows or Internet Explorer is active which
considers the compiled HTML file to be a security hazard.
This problem most often occurs when opening a *.chm file from a
network drive on systems running Windows XP with SP2, which may
be the case when you downloaded the reference manual instead of
installing ActivVisionTools (which should be on a local drive
anyway). Please copy the file to a local drive. If the problem persists,
right-click |
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Starting the demo application ActivViewer causes an immediate crash. | |||
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On startup, ActivVisionTools perform an autodetection of the available
image acquisition devices. In rare cases it is possible that the presence
of an incompatible driver version causes this problem. You can test this
by disabling the autodetection (which means you can only load images
from file). To do so, append the following line to the file AVTView.nls
in the directory %AVTROOT%\nls: AVTView.FGSelection A File Please make a copy of the file before doing so, and be sure to use the exact spelling and capitalization. If the entry AVTView.FGSelection already exists, replace the entire line. If this prevents the crash, you need to update your drivers. Please check the documentation of the corresponding frame grabber interface to find out about the required driver version, or contact your local distributor for more information. |
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The message "Error loading HALCON library" appears when starting an ActivVisionTools application. | |||
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The problem is that Windows is not able to locate the HALCON DLL.
This is typically caused by a corrupted PATH variable:
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The message "License file missing or corrupt" appears when starting an ActivVisionTools application | |||
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This license error often has nothing to do with a missing or invalid
ActivVisionTools or HALCON license. Instead, the error may be caused
by libraries which are not correctly registered.
On some systems, the installation will only be successful if you
log in with administrator privileges one more time after the system
has rebooted. If this fails, you can attempt to mend the problem
manually by calling |
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The message "Some settings of the DSC file have been lost" appears when starting an ActivVisionTools application. | |||
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This is normal when starting an application for the first time from Visual Studio .NET or Visual C++ 6.0. The DSC file will then be created if the AVTNETControl is added for .NET or the appropriate code changes have been applied for C++ (see Advanced User's Guide). Furthermore, there is a known bug in 3.1 which may lead to some strange characters (?) being appended to the name of the DSC file when using Visual Studio 2005. As a workaround, please disable the hosting process from the debug tab of the project properties. | |
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The message "You do not have an appropriate license to use this functionality" appears when starting an ActivVisionTools application | |||
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This error message is displayed by the Windows OS, if a library, which
is needed by an application, is not correctly registered in the
Windows registry. In conjunction with ActivViewer, on some systems
the library SCRRUN.DLL is not correctly installed
and responsible for that error. You can find the file on the
ActivVisionTools DVD or CD in the folder
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ActivVisionTools Homepage
