All ActivVisionTools 3.1 licenses must be replaced. Please contact your local distributor.

ActivVisionTools 3.2 is not compatible with ActivVisionTools 3.1.x, i.e., you cannot start executables that were created with ActivVisionTools 3.1.x. Whether projects created with ActivVisionTools 3.1.x can be started directly depends on the used programming language:

• Visual Basic 6.0 projects can be opened without further action. You should get a message that the type library version has increased.
• .NET projects can be opened after modifying them as follows:
  • Open the project file (.vbproj or .csproj) with Notepad.
  • Increase the version in the references to ActivVTools and AxActivVTools so that they look as follows:

    <Reference
        Name = "ActivVTools"
        Guid = "{8554E7E3-CFBA-11D6-A18D-00E029346121}"
        VersionMajor = "3"
        VersionMinor = "0"
        Lcid = "0"
        WrapperTool = "tlbimp"
    />
    <Reference
        Name = "AxActivVTools"
        Guid = "{8554E7E3-CFBA-11D6-A18D-00E029346121}"
        VersionMajor = "3"
        VersionMinor = "0"
        Lcid = "0"
        WrapperTool = "aximp"
    />

  • Now, you can open the project.
• Visual C++ projects cannot be upgraded easily, due to the way Visual C++ handles ActiveX Controls. We recommend to create the project anew following the instructions in the Advanced User's Guide and then copy the relevant code from the old project.

Independent of the used programming language, you will be informed via a message box that some parameter settings may have changed because the description file (DSC file) was created by an older version.

Please check whether the following changes affect your application:

• New property controlling whether images may be dropped onto the window of AVTView
• Complete revision of ActivBarcode
• Updated image acquisition API

ActivVisionTools 3.2 is based on HALCON 8.0.2, whereas version 3.1.1 is based on a modified version of HALCON 7.1; still older versions are based on HALCON 7.0.1, 6.1, 6.0 or 6.0.1.

• If you have HALCON 8.0 or 8.0.1 already installed on your computer, ActivVisionTools 3.2 will start the HALCON installation, which lets you replace the already installed components with those of HALCON 8.0.2.

• If you have HALCON 7.1 (or older) installed on your computer, the HALCON installation asks you whether it should uninstall this older version of HALCON and install 8.0.2. Note that you can run ActivVisionTools 3.2 only together with HALCON 8.0.2.

  If there is a need to have HALCON 7.1 (or older) remaining on the computer, please ask your local distributor for assistance.

In comparison to ActivVisionTools 3.1.1, ActivVisionTools 3.2 comes with a new set of image acquisition interfaces, which are based on a new version of the HALCON Acquisition Integration Interface.

• If AVTView.EnableWriteToDSCFile is set to False, the automatic storing at application termination is now also suppressed for auxiliary files such as data code models, alignment anchors, and OCR fonts files.

• A corrupt DSC name was used on some systems when running applications from within Visual Studio 2005 if the hosting process was enabled. This has been fixed.
• The method AVTView.ReadFromDSC did not work correctly when used outside of Visual Basic 6.0. This has been fixed.
• In .NET applications using AVTNETControl, it was not possible to prevent writing to the DSC file when the application terminated. Now, AVTNETControl will check and honour the state of AVTView.EnableWriteToDSCFile.

• The manual Getting Started with ActivVisionTools is available in a new edition. It has been updated to reflect the changes in ActivVisionTools 3.2.
• The Advanced User's Guide for ActivVisionTools is available in a new edition. It has been updated to reflect the changes in ActivVisionTools 3.2.
• The example projects for both manuals have been adapted to version 3.2.

• The image acquisition has been significantly improved and updated based on the newest interfaces from HALCON 8.0.2. The acquisition parameters can now be sorted alphabetically and grouped by category and level of expertise. This replaces the old mechanism of selecting parameters manually. The need for *.par files has been removed, all parameter information is now queried at run-time from the connected device.

  The update mechanism has been changed from optional "Auto Apply" to optional "Update Image", i.e. each parameter change is immediately written to the device, but the next grab may be delayed. Support for action parameters (do_* without parameters) has been added to the GUI, they appear as buttons.

  The autodetection of available interfaces is no longer performed automatically on startup, but is available via GUI commands. This allows to repeat detection after connecting new devices, and eases troubleshooting when a bad interface/driver combination causes problems during detection. Furthermore, detection now also works on file level to detect even those interfaces which did not exist at the time of the release.

  The acquisition GUI is now wider to provide more space for long parameter names. Furthermore, the acquisition parameter dialog is now resizable in height and uses alternating line colors for improved usability.

  Compatibility Notes: The properties FGAutoApply and FGInfoBoards have been removed from AVTView. The behavior of FGTrigger (and the trigger checkbox in the acquisition GUI) has been modified in that it only has an effect after reconnecting a device, as it was already the case for all other parameters in that GUI. Of course, enabling or disabling the trigger is still possible, for this, please use the acquisition parameter GUI and modify the parameter "external_trigger". Some special handling for DirectShow devices has been dropped in favour of the same generic mechanism now used for all other interfaces, which may cause minor changes in the value lists suggested for connection parameters.

• The new property AllowDragAndDrop (with corresponding check boxes in AVTViewConfigExec) now controls whether images may be dropped onto the window of AVTView. This functionality was formerly bound to the state of the property "UsePopup". Applications making use of that property may need to adapt AllowDragAndDrop to retain their old behavior with respect to drag & drop operations.

  This modification allows to support drag and drop in end user applications even when access to the popup menu is disabled.

• ActivView now offers new events for keyboard and ROI actions, namely ROICreated, ROIModified, ROIDeleted, KeyDown, and KeyUp, as well as a new method SetWindowFocus (key events require the window to have focus).

• When using the DirectShow interface, it was not possible to specify values for port and camera type differing from those occuring in the respective value lists. This has been fixed.
• The "auto" state of some image acquisition parameters was not initialized correctly on application startup. This has been fixed.
• ReadFromDSC did not work for some settings like image acquisition parameters which are reloaded on certain events such as connecting to a new device. Now, the input file will always be copied over the default DSC file of the application.

  Furthermore, when using ReadFromDSC in applications with multiple views, it was possible that ROI data was loaded incorrectly for tools connected to slave views. This has been fixed.

• If an image acquisition device parameter was set to "auto", any attempt to set a numerical value via AVTView.SetFGParameterValue was ignored. This has been fixed.
• It was possible to create two distinct ROIs with identical name when creating one ROI interactively and one via the API. This has been fixed.
• Applications with a large number of AVTView instances (> 10) were likely to crash in some cases. This has been fixed.
• The right scrollbar arrow key had no effect for some image acquisition parameters of floating point type, such as 'exposure' for uEye, and possibly some parameters having large integer value ranges. This has been fixed. Furthermore, the width of the scrollbars has been increased.

• The User's Manual for ActivView is available in a new edition. It has been updated to reflect the changes in ActivVisionTools 3.2. The sections with information for all supported image acquisition interfaces have been replaced by a more compact section.
• The example Visual Basic projects have been adapted to version 3.2.

• Image rectification capability has been added for the 3D calibration. This functionality is currently not accessible via the GUI, but user code can obtain a rectified image by calling the method RectifyImage on AVTView.Calibration.

• The User's Manual for ActivGeoCalib is available in a new edition. It has been updated to reflect the changes in ActivVisionTools 3.2.
• The example Visual Basic projects have been adapted to version 3.2.

• If the anchor was located successfully, the displayed anchor region is now based on the contour of the trained anchor, and no longer on the contours extracted from the search image. In particular, the anchor contours are now fully visible even if parts of the anchor are occluded in the search image.

• The User's Manual for ActivAlignment is available in a new edition. It has been updated to reflect the changes in ActivVisionTools 3.2.
• The example Visual Basic projects have been adapted to version 3.2.

• The "preview" of potential edges (at half the contrast) in AVTMeasureGraph did not display the correct edges when measuring edge pairs. This has been fixed.
• The feature "Angle" for individual edges was incorrectly affected by calibrating and using metric units. This has been fixed.

• The User's Manual for ActivMeasure is available in a new edition. It has been updated to reflect the changes in ActivVisionTools 3.2.
• The example Visual Basic projects have been adapted to version 3.2.

• The tool ActivBarcode has been completely revised and is now based on the new reader of HALCON 8.0. The new reader is more robust, requires less parameters, and supports RSS-14 including all of its stacked and composite variants.

  Furthermore, ActivBarcode now supports reading inverted codes, i.e., white elements on a dark background.

  Since the parameters are completely different, this change breaks compatibility between ActivVisionTools 3.2 and 3.1.x.

  Note, that code names have also changes (e.g., EAN-13 instead of "EAN 13", and that is is no longer possible to read codes with an incorrect check sum. Consequently, the feature "parity" has been removed.

• Setting the barcode type in the API using the property AVTBarcode1D.BarcodeName did not work. This has been fixed.

• The User's Manual for ActivBarcode is available in a new edition. It has been updated to reflect the changes in ActivVisionTools 3.2.
• The example Visual Basic projects have been adapted to version 3.2.

• The User's Manual for ActivBlobFinder is available in a new edition. It has been updated to reflect the changes in ActivVisionTools 3.2.
• The example Visual Basic projects have been adapted to version 3.2.

• The precision of the features "Major Radius" and "Minor Radius" has been improved for the case of perspective distortion with 3D calibration.

• The User's Manual for ActivFeatureCalc is available in a new edition. It has been updated to reflect the changes in ActivVisionTools 3.2.
• The example Visual Basic projects have been adapted to version 3.2.

• ActivOCR now supports the new feature "Gradient" for training fonts, which is useful for characters with varying stroke widths. This corresponds to the feature "gradient_8dir" introduced in HALCON 8.0.

  When used, it should be a *replacement* for one of the pattern features "Gray Values" (PixelInvar) or "Symbol Region" (PixelBinary).

• The teach dialog of ActivOCR did not work with multiple ROIs if one of these ROIs produced no result. This has been fixed.

• The User's Manual for ActivOCR is available in a new edition. It has been updated to reflect the changes in ActivVisionTools 3.2.
• The example Visual Basic projects have been adapted to version 3.2.

• The User's Manual for ActivDecision is available in a new edition. It has been updated to reflect the changes in ActivVisionTools 3.2.
• The example Visual Basic projects have been adapted to version 3.2.

• If the file option 'Limit File Size' was not set, ActivFile only wrote the data of 32768 execution cycles before generating an error. This problem has been fixed.

• The User's Manual for ActivSerial is available in a new edition. It has been updated to reflect the changes in ActivVisionTools 3.2.
• The example Visual Basic projects have been adapted to version 3.2.

• The User's Manual for ActivDigitalIO is available in a new edition. It has been updated to reflect the changes in ActivVisionTools 3.2.
• The example Visual Basic projects have been adapted to version 3.2.

• ActivVisionTools now also includes the ABS interface to support ABS UK1000/3000 cameras.
• ActivVisionTools now also includes the GigEVision interface to support GigE Vision compliant cameras.
• ActivVisionTools now also includes the iPORT interface to support cameras that are connected through the iPORT IP Engine from Pleora.
• ActivVisionTools now also includes the LinX interface to support LinX GINGA digital-CL1e/CL2e/CL4e and GINGA++M1e/M4e boards.
• ActivVisionTools now also includes the mEnableIV interface to support the microEnable IV frame grabber boards from Silicon Software GmbH.
• ActivVisionTools now also includes the mEnableVisualApplets interface to support Silicon Software microEnable boards via VisualApplets.
• ActivVisionTools now also includes the pylon interface to support the Basler scout GigE Vision cameras.
• ActivVisionTools now also includes the RangerC interface to support SICK IVP Ranger C cameras.
• ActivVisionTools now also includes the RangerE interface to support SICK IVP Ranger D and Ranger E cameras.
• ActivVisionTools now also includes the VRmUsbCam interface to support VRmagic USB 2.0 cameras.

• To avoid confusion with existing or coming acquisition interfaces, the following interfaces have been renamed:
  • mEnable3 to mEnableIII
  • FlashBus to FlashBusMV
  • IDS to FALCON
• Please note that all image acquisition interfaces have been modified because they are based on a new version of the HALCON Acquisition Integration Interface. Please refer to the documentation of your interface for more information, especially whether a new revision of the corresponding device driver is required.

• The ActivViewer layout was incorrect on XP systems using the standard Windows XP theme, causing the status bar to appear clipped by a few pixels. This has been fixed.