VTK/Building

Building VTK CVS on Win32

Does not require the use of a CVS client

Step 1

Download VTK vtkNightlyDoc.tag.gz and unpack the archive into

C:\MyProjects\VTKCVS

This archive is generated every night from the CVS of VTK. It contains exactly what you would get if you were to use a cvs client to download VTK from the cvs server.

Step 2

Download CMake (CMake 2.4.4). Choose the windows installer (cmake-2.4.4-win32.exe) and install it.

Step 3

Create a folder

C:\MyProjects\VTKCVSBin

This will store the compiled binaries

Step 4

Start CMake, provide the source codes and binaries paths to CMake. Then press Configure button to let CMake read the CMakeLists.txt from the source path and configure the variables. In your case you should have:

Where is the source code: C:\MyProjects\VTKCVS
Where to build the binaries: C:\MyProjects\VTKCVSBin

Once you hit 'Configure', make sure to turn on:

* BUILD_SHARED_LIBS

this causes the VTK dlls to be built. You should not change anything else.

Step 5

Open the VTK.sln (VTK.dsw for the old VS6) from

C:\MyProjects\VTKCVSBin 

using VS .Net 2003 and build it. You can choose either to build in Release or Debug (prefer release since the code will be faster).

Step 6

Installation, the VTK dll will be in

C:\MyProjects\VTKCVSBin\bin\release

therefore by default the system cannot find them. You have the choice in either copying the dll to

c:\windows\system32

or change the environment variable PATH to include the path:

C:\MyProjects\VTKCVSBin\bin\release

Be very careful if you have multiple VTK installed on your system that you are using the right one. It is strongly suggested that only one version of the VTK dll be on one system.

Step 7

When building your project if you don't use CMake, make sure that Additional Include Directories and Additional Library Directories (from within the Visual Studio interface) are pointing to the proper path of VTKCVS and not the old VTK 4.4 or VTK5

Installing VTK

NOTE:

• Make sure to be using CMake 2.4.4 for this step. CMake 2.4.3 (and before) has a known issue with VS.Net 2003 + patch update.
• It is assumed that you have already built VTK. If not refer to previous section on how to build VTK.

Steps:

1. Start CMake (CMakeSetup.exe).
2. Configure VTK (select the correct binary directory in "Where to build the binaries").
3. Select the proper path for "CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX". It should be something like : "C:/MY INSTALLATION/VTK"
4. Click Configure
5. Click "OK"
6. Open Visual Studio, select the VTK.sln (VTK.dsw if using VS6) project from the binary directoy.
7. Make sure that ALL_BUILD is the selected target. Build it. It should be a noop.
8. Once this is done, select the "INSTALL" target. And build this target (eg. Right click on it, then Build this taget only). This will copy and the the correct permission for all the files needed to use VTK in the directory you have specified.

Links

• Installing VTK 4.1.x on a windows PC
• How to build VTK with Java support on Windows
• Building VTK on Linux with Java support