AcadNetAddinWizard & More

Be Cautious about the Sneak Mixed Platform Visual Studio Project Configuration

When a big visual studio solution adds or switches projects, many times, a Mixed Platform Visual Studio Project Configuration will be automatically created and SET AS THE ACTIVE CONFIGURATION. Not sure how that happens exactly, but unfortunately it will cause very weird behavior and waste a lot of time if people are not aware of it.

Especially when WPF is used and this happens, the .NET runtime will complain about some weird stuffs like something cannot be found, something is missing, something could not be loaded, a particular line of good code is wrong and so on. The most weird part is that the Visual Studio debugger won't hit any break points that you set into the code.

So, it's likely that many hours will be spent on trouble shooting or digging here and there for some tricky behavior like this. Even for us who have experienced the suffer many times, sometimes it still took quite a while for us to realize the same problem came up again.

The solution is easy and straightforward, removing the Mixed Platform from the solution and setting the active configuration the same as the one working before.

AutoCAD .NET Addin Wizard 2015

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VSIX Installations on Windows 10

If still no toolbars appear in Visual Studio 2013 or 2015 after AcadNetAddinWizardPro is properly installed, MSI is run as Administrator, and tips are followed, as published before:

Feature Index of AutoCAD .NET Addin Wizard 2015

Run MSI as Administrator

there should be a problem with the UAC of Windows itself especially version 10. Most likely, the VSIXInstaller.exe prevents the ANAW2015.vsix and any other VSIX files (Visual Studio Extensions) from running properly, by default.

The standard double click operation over a VSIX file in the File Explorer is not installing ANY Visual Studio 2015 or 2013 extensions on Windows 10. The Visual Studio 2015 and 2013 options simply would not show up in the VSIX installation dialog, which is weird. The VSIXInstaller.exe seemed to require the administrative permissions, but was not possible to make through "install as administrator" or similar anymore on Windows 10. Not sure why they changed the behavior and made people's life a bit harder than before.

The only way to install the VSIX extensions properly is to execute the VSIXInstaller.exe as administrator and pass the VSIX file as a parameter as follows:

• Open a Command Prompt window as Administrator, better from the Visual Studio Tools shot-cut
• Go to the Common\IDE folder of the Visual Studio 2015/2013 installation, such as:
          CD "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\Common7\IDE"
• Execute the VSIX installer and pass the VSIX file as a parameter, such as:
          VSIXInstaller.exe "C:\Program Files (x86)\AcadNetAddinWizardPRO\ANAW2015.vsix"

WPF Tip 101: #51 Bind to Public Static Variables

Sometimes, we may want to bind the data of WPF controls to public static variables in a public static class.

It look simple, but is a bit more complex than binding to members of a class instance that is assigned to the DataContext of the parent element.

When details are figured, it becomes straightforward in the future. Here we go.

 <local:MyStaticClass x:Key="StaticClass" />

<ComboBox ... ItemsSource={Binding Source={StaticResource StaticClass}, Path=StaticList}" ... />

The StaticClass static resource key points to a class named 'MyStaticClass' in the current (local) project namespace. The StaticList is a static member, being a list containing some items for the combo box, in the static class. That is it.

AutoCAD .NET Addin Wizard 2015

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WPF Tip 101: #50 Grey Out Image Button

If a WPF Button is defined as a single image, when the button is disabled the image won't be greyed out automatically.

There might be a variety of ways to grey out the image, e.g. in event callbacks and swapping images from one to another. The simplest and also the most WPF way however is found out to define a simple style for the Image:

 <Style TargetType="Image">
<Style.Triggers>
<Trigger Property="IsEnabled" Value="False">
<Setter Property="Opacity" Value="0.2" />
</Trigger>
</Style.Triggers>
</Style>

 

Not sure why the behavior is not provided by WPF itself.

AutoCAD .NET Addin Wizard 2015

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WPF Tip 101: #49 Resolve ResourceDictionary Source Finding/Loading Issue

If some resources are defined in an XML of another assembly and we want to use them in some XMLs in the current assembly, generally we declare it as follows, either using the full application syntax or the simple component one:  

<ResourceDictionary Source="pack://application:,,,/AssemblyName;component/folder/ResourceFile.xaml"/>

<ResourceDictionary Source="/AssemblyName;component/folder/ResourceFile.xaml"/>

Either works just fine in the design time. The resources could be found from the other assembly and the current XML window pages look just fine.

However, when running the code in either debug or release mode, the WPF run time will complain that the other assembly could not be found. No matter where you put the other assembly, it just does not work most of times. Even if it works sometimes, some other times behavior would just become trickier. Using the dependant assembly resolving path event looks not only quite some work but also hard to address all scenarios properly.

Through a lot of trials and errors, it's found that the final solution is simple like this, creating a dummy XML window into the same other assembly and trying to load it before using any of those resources defined in the same assembly. It's based on the simple fact that loading a page, control or window from the same assembly would not cause any issue. Of course, the assembly should be referenced into the current assembly for the workaround to work. This will less likely be missing since the XML display in the design mode needs the other assembly to be properly referenced as well.

Hope this could save peoples' hours of effort and many trickier behavior in the regard.

AutoCAD .NET Addin Wizard 2015

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