Tech Soft 3D - developer.hoops3d.com

.NET is a platform for building, deploying, and running Web Services and applications. It provides a highly productive, standards-based, multi-language environment for integrating existing investments with next-generation applications and services as well as the agility to solve the challenges of deployment and operation of Internet-scale applications. The .NET Framework consists of three main parts: the common language runtime, a hierarchical set of unified class libraries, and a componentized version of Active Server Pages called ASP .NET.

Developers who are unfamiliar with the technical details of .NET technologies or Visual Studio .NET should refer to the abundance of .NET technical overview material.

An overview of the .NET platform can be located at:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/cpguide/html/cpovrintroductiontonetframeworksdk.asp

An overview of Visual Studio .NET can be located at:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/vsintro7/html/vxconATourOfVisualStudio.asp

What is the relationship between HOOPS/3dAF and .NET ?

Developers creating .NET applications may want to add HOOPS/3dAF functionality to .NET-enabled applications, such as the ability to access, view, and interact with 3D information. This would require developers to be able to access HOOPS/3dAF components from with the Visual Studio .NET development environment.

Can I call HOOPS/3dAF components from C# or other .NET languages that have been compiled into managed code?

Yes. Visual Studio .NET includes a set of language extensions which allow you to call unmanaged (native) C++ classes from any .NET language. This involves writing a simple wrapper class using the extensions that exposes the C++ class and methods as a managed class. The wrapper class acts as a mapping layer between the managed class and the unmanaged C++ class. It simply passes method calls from the .NET world directly into the unmanaged class. The managed extensions can be used to call native classes as well as any native dynamic-link library. Therefore, any of the HOOPS/3dAF components could be accessed using managed extensions.

Does TSA have plans to create these wrappers for the HOOPS/3dAF components or will I have to create them myself?

Tech Soft America continually extends the HOOPS/3dAF components to support new platforms, compilers and programming languages. These enhancements are driven by customer needs and trends in the engineering software development community. As developer interest in .NET technology grows, and customers begin to develop plans of how to incorporate .NET technologies into new and existing applications, Tech Soft America will enhance the HOOPS/3dAF components to ensure that they can easily be accessed from .NET languages.

Will the HOOPS/3dAF components work with Windows.Forms classes?

Yes. In review, the Windows.Forms class are used when writing client-side GUI applications with the .NET Framework. Therefore, the HOOPS/3dGS component needs to work in conjunction with Windows.Forms so that the HOOPS/3dGS scene-graph can be displayed in a GUI window. Because HOOPS/3dGS provides robust support for integrating with native GUIs, it will work with Windows.Forms.

Does TSA have plans to rewrite any of the HOOPS/3dAF components in C# or recompile any of the C++ components as managed code?

No. One of the benefits of .NET is the ability to leverage existing native code. This enables .NET developers to access natively compiled HOOPS/3dAF components, which in turn ensures optimal performance and efficient memory management.