All ActivVisionTools 3.0 licenses must be replaced. Please contact your local distributor.

ActivVisionTools 3.1 is binary compatible with ActivVisionTools 3.0., i.e., you can start executables that were created with ActivVisionTools 3.0. Whether projects created with ActivVisionTools 3.0 can be started directly depends on the used programming language:

• Visual Basic 6.0 projects can be opened with further action.
• .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 = "2"
        VersionMinor = "1"
        Lcid = "0"
        WrapperTool = "tlbimp"
    />
    <Reference
        Name = "AxActivVTools"
        Guid = "{8554E7E3-CFBA-11D6-A18D-00E029346121}"
        VersionMajor = "2"
        VersionMinor = "1"
        Lcid = "0"
        WrapperTool = "aximp"
    />

  • Now, you can open the project.
• C++ projects can be opened directly.

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:

• By default, ActivGeoCalib now expects the new standard calibration plates introduced with HALCON 7.1.
• By default, ActivOCR now rejects regions that touch the ROI border during the segmentation.
• By default, ActivDecision now reports ROIs as bad if they have a bad object, and a tool is reported as bad if it has a bad ROI.
• If an application contained an anchor for ActivAlignment but explicitly disabled the aligning of ROIs, this setting will be lost.

Note that ActivVisionTools 3.1 is not compatible with ActivVisionTools 2.0 or earlier versions, with the following implications:

• When you open a Visual Basic project which was created using ActivVisionTools 2.0, you will be informed that this version cannot be found. You can "upgrade" the project with the following method: Proceed with the loading, before any other action open the menu Project->Components and select ActivVisionTools 3.1, and save the project immediately. Then, open the project again.
• Likewise, any executable created using ActivVisionTools 2.0 will not work anymore. Proceed similarly to above: Open the corresponding Visual Basic project, select ActivVisionTools 3.1 in the menu Project->Components, and immediately save the project. Then, open the project again and create a new executable.

ActivVisionTools 3.1 is based on (a modified version of) HALCON 7.1, whereas version 3.0 is based on a modified version of HALCON 7.0.1; still older versions are all based on HALCON 6.1, 6.0 or 6.0.1.

• If you have HALCON 7.1 already installed on your computer, ActivVisionTools 3.1 will start the HALCON installation, which lets you replace the already installed components with those of the modified version of HALCON 7.1.

• If you have HALCON 7.0 (or older) installed on your computer, you must upgrade to the modified version of HALCON 7.1 or remove the older version of HALCON. You can run ActivVisionTools 3.1 only together with (the modified version) HALCON 7.1.

  If there is a need to have HALCON 7.0 (or older) remaining on the computer, please ask your local distributor for assistance.

ActivVisionTools 3.1 provides updates for many frame grabber interfaces, even some in comparison to HALCON 7.1. Therefore, please check the list of modified frame grabber interfaces.

• The total execution time in continuous execution mode has been reduced by an average of 5ms/cycle (depending on the application).

• The popup menu concept has been strengthened. Now, all tools provide a popup menu when clicking on them with the right mouse button. Support tools provide the popup menu of their master tool.

  The new menu items "Properties", "Connections" and - if applicable - "ROIs" provide shortcuts to the appropriate dialogs. Furthermore, the popup menu now has a title displaying the instance name of the tool owning the menu.

• The ActivVToolsNET assembly for development under .NET now includes the new AVTNETControl. When placed on the Form, it manages the integration of ActivVisionTools automatically, thus replacing the previous need to write a few lines of code in each project.

• The path handling for loading and saving images should now be more intuitive, especially when calling the method AVTView.SaveImage. If image files reside in the project/EXE directory or in a subdirectory thereof, only the relative path will be stored.
• The log files have been combined to a single "ActivVisionTools.log", which resides in the directory %TEMP%. The file is now directly accessible via the menu "About > Error Information" of ActivViewer.
• It is no longer possible to use a license bound to a CPU ID (Pentium III). The corresponding entry has been removed from the licensing dialog and property page.

• A small memory leak occurred each time a property value was changed. This has been fixed.
• Error boxes did not offer to "Cancel" continuous execution if the RunState was set on a Slave View. This has been fixed.

• The manual Getting Started with ActivVisionTools is available in a new edition. It has been updated to reflect the changes in ActivVisionTools 3.1. Besides, it now shows how to use ActivVisionTools in Visual Basic .NET without writing a single line of code.
• The Advanced User's Guide for ActivVisionTools is available in a new edition. It has been updated to reflect the changes in ActivVisionTools 3.1. Besides, it now explains how to handle DSC files via the programming interface.
• The example projects for both manuals have been adapted to version 3.1.

• It is now possible to load an image file or directory into AVTView simply by dragging the file over the view window.
• Using the virtual file grabber, it now possible in AVTViewFG to select a directory instead of an input file. In this case, all images in this directory will be loaded sequentially when images are grabbed. The name of the actually loaded file can be queried with new property AVTView.FGFileNameGrabbed, which can also be used when grabbing using a sequence file (*.seq).
• The new method AVTView.ReadFromDSC allows to import settings from an explicitely specified DSC file, assuming that the same tools were used in both cases.

• It is now possible to specify a lookup table for displaying gray value images via AVTViewDisplayModes or AVTView.ImageLUT.
• You can now save the image including the displayed overlay into a file, either via a button in AVTviewFG or via the new method AVTView.SaveWindow.

• It is now possible to activate contrasting contours for display overlays and a solid background for text overlays to improve readability of text or visibility of edges via AVTViewDisplayModes or AVTView.DisplayOutlining and AVTView.DisplayTextBackground.

  Furthermore, the positioning of text overlays has been improved, long text overlays will wrap, and the default display font size has been increased.

• After opening the image acquisition dialog for a second time, the connection to the frame grabber was unnecessarily reopened even if no parameters were changed. This bug has been fixed. Note that this problem was erroneously reported as fixed for version 3.0.
• The file load filter for AVI files was erroneously set to *.avt instead of *.avi. This bug has been fixed.
• It was not possible to directly grab images from multiple cameras using the FirePackage interface. This bug has been fixed.
• The method AVTView.AddOverlayText did not work. This bug has been fixed.
• Instances of AVTViewROI on the Form did not remember which instance of AVTView they were connected to (when more than one instance of AVTView was available). This bug has been fixed.
• The reset parameter button in AVTViewFG had no effect. This bug has been fixed.
• The status history which is accessible by double clicking on the status text in AVTViewStatus was inoperable if no license for ActivGUIComponents was available. This bug has been fixed.

• The new methods AddOverlayLine and AddOverlayCircle provide convenient access to user-defined visualization and have been added to both AVTView and AVTGenericInterface.
• It is now possible to explicitely reset AVTView.HalconImage to Nothing.

• The User's Manual for ActivView is available in a new edition. It has been updated and extended to reflect the changes in ActivVisionTools 3.1.
• The example Visual Basic projects have been adapted to version 3.1.

• By default, ActivGeoCalib now expects the new standard calibration plates introduced with HALCON 7.1. These calibration plates have a triangular mark in the upper left corner of its black frame to allow to detecting the plate's orientation uniquely. See the User's Manual for ActivGeoCalib for further information.

• The User's Manual for ActivGeoCalib is now available in a new edition. It has been updated and extended to reflect the changes in ActivVisionTools 3.1.
• The example Visual Basic projects have been adapted to version 3.1.

• The automatic estimation of internal teaching parameters has been improved. Furthermore, the parameter "Contrast" can now be automatically determined by clicking on the button "Auto" in AVTAlignmentTeach, or using the corresponding method AVTAlignment.DetermineContrast.

• Setting a new reference position for the aligment anchor did not correctly adapt polygon ROIs of other tools. The same applied to the corresponding API calls for transforming polygon ROIs. This bug has been fixed.
• A license error (which could be ignored) was sometimes displayed when an anchor was trained for the first time in a project. This has been fixed. Furthermore, the default value of AVTView.AlignROIs has been changed to True. On the other hand, the value of AVTView.AlignROIs is no longer automatically set to True by loading or training an anchor. Note that if an existing application contained an anchor, but explicitly disabled the aligning of ROIs, this setting will be lost.

• The User's Manual for ActivAlignment is now available in a new edition. It has been updated to reflect the changes in ActivVisionTools 3.1. Besides, it explains how to access the results of ActivAlignment via the programming interface in Visual Basic .NET.
• The example Visual Basic projects have been adapted to version 3.1.

• The User's Manual for ActivMeasure is now available in a new edition. It has been updated to reflect the changes in ActivVisionTools 3.1. Besides, it explains how to access the results of ActivMeasure via the programming interface in Visual Basic .NET.
• The example Visual Basic projects have been adapted to version 3.1.

• The geometric features of the bar code (position, extent and orientation) were derived from the smallest rectangle enclosing the bar code region, which produced unintuitive results if the extracted bar code region was not a clean rectangle. Now, the features are derived from the smallest enclosing rectangle with a major axis parallel to the bar code read direction.

  Furthermore, the position feature has been extended to yield an intuitive result for circular arc ROIs.

• The User's Manual for ActivBarcode is now available in a new edition. It has been updated to reflect the changes in ActivVisionTools 3.1. Besides, it explains how to access the results of ActivBarcode via the programming interface in Visual Basic .NET.
• The example Visual Basic projects have been adapted to version 3.1.

• The User's Manual for ActivBlobFinder is now available in a new edition. It has been updated to reflect the changes in ActivVisionTools 3.1.
• The example Visual Basic projects have been adapted to version 3.1.

• The User's Manual for ActivFeatureCalc is now available in a new edition. It has been updated to reflect the changes in ActivVisionTools 3.1. Besides, it explains how to access the results of ActivFeatureCalc via the programming interface in Visual Basic .NET.
• The example Visual Basic projects have been adapted to version 3.1.

• The execution time has been improved in the case that symbol alternatives do not need to be calculated (i.e., no AVTWordProcess is connected and AVTOCR.CalcSymbolAlternatives is False).

• It is now possible to reject candidates touching the ROI border (which typically represent partial symbols or unwanted structure intruding into the ROI). This is controlled by the property AVTView.EliminateBorderBlobs and the corresponding check box in the advanced settings dialog.

  This behavior is active by default. If an existing application relies on a very tight ROI, you need to deactivate it.

• The OCR fonts have been updated. Some new symbols have been added. In order to improve the classification results, more samples for existing classes have been added, and some symbols which causes a lot of conflicts have been removed (see below). Note: If you need to read a removed symbol, you can continue to use the fonts provided on the ActivVisionTools 3.0 CD.

  Font	Added	Removed
  Document	,§€	/\
  Industrial	,€	\=<>#&()
  Pharma	:	\=+<>#$%&*
  DotPrint	,:	\=+<>#$%&()

• The estimated text orientation and slant is now always returned even if no symbols have been found in the ROI.
• AVTOCRView now offers to display the bounding boxes of connected components or symbol candidate regions.
• When inspecting the word processing, the selected word is now highlighted in AVTView. Furthermore, corrected expressions atoms are now marked with green background in the details view.

• The checkboxes for "Diacritic Marks" and "Connection" were sometimes grayed out even if changing them would have had an effect. This bug has been fixed.
• When using fuzzy partitioning, it was possible that a symbol appeared doubled in the OCR result. This bug has been fixed.
• It was not possible to copy or move a *single* sample from one trainfile to another *empty* trainfile. The problem has been removed.
• If the mouse button was held on the header of a trainfile browser column, the data was re-sorted continuously. Now, the data is only sorted when the button is pressed and released on a header.
• If an instance of ActivWordProcess did not process all ROIs of its OCR predecessor tool, the unprocessed ROIs still appeared in the inspection dialog and output tools like ActivDataView. This bug has been fixed.

• The User's Manual for ActivOCR is now available in a new edition. It has been updated to reflect the changes in ActivVisionTools 3.1. Besides, it explains how to access the results of ActivOCR via the programming interface in Visual Basic .NET.
• The example Visual Basic projects have been adapted to version 3.1.

• ActivDecision now has a property called StopOnBadEvaluation which stops the execution (RunState = False) if a bad evaluation is encountered.
• The default settings of ActivDecision have been changed, so that an ROI is reported as bad if it has a bad object, and a tool is reported as bad if it has a bad ROI. When upgrading an existing project which uses ActivDecision with another interpretation of bad objects, you might need to reconfigure the settings.

• A problem with wrong contents in the context defaults dialog has been fixed.

• The User's Manual for ActivDecision is available in a new edition. It has been updated and extended to reflect the changes in ActivVisionTools 3.1. Besides, it explains how to access the evaluations via the programming interface in Visual Basic .NET.
• The example Visual Basic projects have been adapted to version 3.1.

• ActiveSerial now offers a low-level API for reading and writing data from and to the serial port by providing the methods ReadText, WriteText, ReadData, and WriteData. The settings configured over the GUI are generally also used for theses methods.

• The example Visual Basic projects have been adapted to version 3.1.

• The example Visual Basic projects have been adapted to version 3.1.

• ActivVisionTools now also includes a general purpose 1394 IIDC (FireWire) interface.
• ActivVisionTools now also includes a interface to load files via the DirectShow File Reader.
• ActivVisionTools now also includes an interface to the INSPECTA-5 frame grabber boards from Mikrotron.
• ActivVisionTools now also includes an interface to the microEnable III frame grabber boards from Silicon Software.
• ActivVisionTools now also includes an interface to the frame grabber boards Meteor-II, Helios, Solios, Odyssey via MIL-Lite 8.0 from Matrox.
• ActivVisionTools now also includes an interface to use the frame grabber boards via the Coreco SaperaLT library.
• ActivVisionTools now also includes a interface to the XCI-SX1 camera from Sony.
• ActivVisionTools now also includes an interface to the TAG camera family from Tattile.

• The following frame grabber interfaces have been revised. Please refer to the corresponding documentation for more information, especially whether a new revision of the corresponding device driver is required.

  BARRACUDA, BaumerFCAM, BCAM1394, BitFlow, DFG-LC, DirectShow, FirePackage, FlashBus, FlashBusMX, IDS, INSPECTA, MatrixVision, MeteorII, MultiCam, p3i2, p3i4, TWAIN, and uEye.

• ActivVisionTools 3.1 now provide Native Language Support also for Simplified Chinese.

• The log files have been combined to a single "ActivVisionTools.log", which resides in the directory %TEMP%. The file is now directly accessible via the menu "About > Error Information" of ActivViewer.

• When loading an image into ActivViewer via the command line (or using the "Open With ..." or "Send To ..." features of the Windows Explorer), the image was loaded, but the grab configuration was not adapted. Now, the "File" grabber is selected and the file name is set to the specified image. This allows using sequence files or to reexecute on the specified image.

• ActivVisionTools now uses version 10.8 of the FLEXlm license manager software.