[vtkusers] More Questions

[ronharshbarger at mmm.com]

Sorry if I am being excessively anal and dense but I am really leery of
installing software when I don't understand it. I bought the full set of
books and the CD for VTK  5.0.2 and I use the Microsoft Visual Studio dot
net foundation classes in C++ to do almost all of my programming which runs
on XP/2000 or a Windows server. When I autorun the CD, it starts the
installer and wants to install a bunch of things that are not in the
"Mastering CMake" book. When I read the readme.html on the CD, under
Windows it says I can install the binaries but then in the same paragraph
it states that if I use C++ I can't use the binaries and will need to
rebuild them from the source code supplied. Can't I just include the source
files in my build? What are these other programs and do I need them to add
3D rendering to my programs? I really don't want to learn how to write
CMake script files ( don't have time ) I have grown comfortable letting
Visual Studio do the background scripting so I can focus on what I need the
software to do.

So! I have large arrays of  3 dimensional data (x,y,z) in my MFC
application that I want to let my user visualize and perhaps manipulate in
3D space. I thought that I could accomplish this by incorporating VTK
classes into my application. I didn't plan on a significant paradigm shift
to get there.

Have I blown the $200?




Ron N. Harshbarger
Sr. Manufacturing Development Specialist
3M Film Manufacturing and Supply Chain Operations
3M Center, Building 0236-01S-04
St. Paul, MN 55144-1000
Tel:  651-737-1382
Email: ronharshbarger at mmm.com