FalconView C# Plug-in Wizards

In order to jump start development of FalconView overlay tools, we have created plugin wizards for Microsoft Visual Studio to create skeleton overlays using C#.

There are 3 wizards available:

• One for the older (4.2 and earlier) ILayerEditor interfaces using Visual Studio 2005
• Two versions for the new (4.2.1 and later) IFVxxx interfaces in VS 2005 and VS 2010

ILayerEditor template for VS2005

The ILayer Editor interface creates a C# based, ILayerEditor/2/3 overlay for Visual Studio 2005. THere are a handfull of options that basically let you choose to add support for:

• ILayerEditor : Simple ILayerEditor overlay (Supported in FalconView 3.2 and later)
• ILayerEditor2 : Include Preferences Controls in your overlay (Supported in FalconView 3.3 and Later)
• ILayerEditor3 : Overlay Editor framework with access to drawing directory to the DC. (Supported in FalconView 4.0 and Later)
• Installer : Create a standalond installer for your overlay

"New" IFVOverlayInterface template for 4.2.1 and later

FalconView 4.2.1 brings a new set of interfaces to FalconView for plugin integration. Instead of one Interface with 40+ methods the IFV interfaces are broken down into a number of Interfaces each with a few methods. This allows a developer to optionally implement only the interfaces their application needs. This wizard has a large set of options and attempts to guide the user through the choice of the interfaces they need, the wizard provides documenation and tooltips on the intent of the interface.

Details n the interface can be found in the Latest Software Developers Kit (See GetTheSdk). These interfaces support the creation of:

• StaticOverlays (Overlays where there are only one per instance of FalconView such as the Coordinate Grid Overlay or Contour Line Overlay)
• FileOverlays (Overlays which can be opened from the "File->Open" menu such as drawings
• Overlay Editors for either file or static overlays such as the Drawing Editor or the Map Data Manager
• Additional Tools Menu entries for things such as the photo GeoTagging tool
• and more... See IFVOverlayInterface for more information

Creating a Tools Menu Item

There is a bug in the FvOverlay? Wizard when attempting to create "only" a Tools Menu Item. Code from the overlay portion of the wizard is left in the project causing build issues. But the work around is simple enough. Delete the extra files!

1) Delete all .cs files from the project except for the FvToolMenuItem?.cs. 2) Rename the Assembly Name in the project settings as before

3) Delete the .XML and Readme files in the project as irrelevant

4) Edit “%programdata%\xplan\data\config\fvToolMenuItem.xml” and “add” a new ToolMenuItem? tag. The plugin manager will not install the tool for you.

1. Uid : generate a GUID to represent “your tool” as a unique identifier

2. Clsid: clsid of the created project from the wizard on the class definition

The project seems to work normally if an overlay is created alongside the tool.

Download links to the tools

Find the plugin wizards here:

http://www.falconview.org/trac/FalconView/browser/FalconView/trunk/Documentation

The PlugIn manager for 4.2.1 and later is here:

http://www.falconview.org/trac/FalconView/browser/FalconView/trunk/public/Applications/PluginManager