[vtkusers] Decided to try again!

[John Drescher]

On Mon, May 18, 2009 at 9:47 AM,  <ronharshbarger at mmm.com> wrote:
>
> OK, I put this aside a while back out of frustration and a lack of
> available time. I have now decided to revisit VTK because I really like the
> renderings that I have seen.
>
> The facts:
> 1. I have been creating applications in MSVC++ ( MFC ) inside of visual
> studio for at least a decade with some success.
> 2. I haven't written a make file in at least 20 years.. can't remember it
> anyway!
> 3. I purchased the books "Visualization Toolkit", "Mastering CMake", and
> "VTK Users Guide" along with the CD from Kitware Inc.
> 4. I am overwhelmed and need some basic "get started" help! Yes even more
> basic than the "getting started" section. I suppose I've been dumbed down
> by the GUI interface of Visual Studio. I guess I need a "Hello World" level
> intro.
> 5. Ideally, I would like to integrate the visualization into my MFC Apps
> but I can deal with a separate app if necessary.
>
> SO where do I start? What do I install? (binaries, source, etc.) I see
> references to Tcl and Tkt, should I pursue them and abandon MSVC?
>

Download and install CMake-2.6.4. Then download the source for vtk-5.4.

Open cmake-gui and configure vtk. Select a build folder that is not in
the tree for the source. The Cmake manual should explain out of source
builds read that section to understand why.

After you have the paths selected click Configure

Then enable VTK_USE_GUISUPPORT then

Configure then enable VTK_USE_MFC. Also enable BUILD_EXAMPLES.

At first only VTK_USE_GUISUPPORT will be visible after a click or two
on configure (be patient it will take some time) you should have all
the options avaiable.

After configured finally choose Generate to generate your Visual
Studio project file. And then build.

Then open the project in Visual Studio and build. I recommend building
the debug version at first. Then probably the releasewithdbginfo.

Then open the examples in the MFC folder and try them out.

When you do get around to writing applications, I highly recommend
that you use CMake to generate you visual studio projects. This will
greatly reduce any headaches you have dealing with linking modes and
include folders since cmake manages all of this for you..

BTW, I am a 15 year MFC / windows programmer who started using vtk
about 1 year ago. I am now writing cross platform Qt / vtk/itk
applications daily.

John