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ILNumerics® Visual Studio Extension - FAQ

Starting from version 6 ILNumerics Ultimate VS Visual Studio Extension is deployed as regular VSIX package from the Microsoft Marketplace. 

 

What versions of Visual Studio are supported?

Visual Studio 2017 and later.

Note, that Visual Studio® Express Edition does not support the loading of custom extensions. However, all other editions, including the the Community Edition, do.

 

What exactly is being installed?

The VSIX extension package installs the following features into Visual Studio:

  • ILNumerics Array Visualizer.
  • ILNumerics Options extension, controlling Array Visualizer properties.
  • A License tab for easy actication of your ILNumerics developer seat (optional). 

 

Can I use the Array Visualizer without using ILNumerics in my project?

Yes. The Array Visualizer works for ...:

  • All common .NET arrays: in C# and Visual Basic, in 32 and 64 bit, for N dimensions. If you are still not using ILNumerics arrays, it will help you to visualize your common .NET arrays nevertheless.
  • For C/C++ the Array Visualizer works for all regular C-style arrays, pointer types (including void*), std::vector, std::array and std::valarray ...
  • More languages (since 4.11): F# (see above), Fortran (all common arrays + arrays of derived types).

No reference to ILNumerics is needed in your project. Just stop at any line of code, fire up the Array Visualizer tool window and start watching your arrays!

 

I want to uninstall ILNumerics Ultimate VS from my Visual Studio. How is this done?

Go to the "Extensions" -> "Manage Extensions" menu of Visual Studio and uninstall the extension from here. 

 

Common Problems with the Visual Studio Extension

The Array Visualizer displays a "Timeout" message

Make sure to select a hardware accelerated driver for the plots. In the VS "Tools" menu, select the ILNumerics section and chose "OpenGL" as renderer  for the Array Visualizer.

If you cannot use OpenGL (because your machine does not support a recent OpenGL version of at least 3.3) you will fall back to GDI automatically. Make sure to keep your expression results within reasonable range than! If you still see timeouts, consider decreasing the data dimension size setting in the Visual Studio Options dialog (ILNumerics tab -> Array Visualizer section) in order to prevent from timeout errors by downsampling your data.

 

How to control the timeout period for GDI drivers

If you stuck with GDI rendering, you should expect lower frame rates. Also, in order to prevent the Debugger session from timing out, GDI renderer introduces its own timeout for displaying large data. The renderer will cancel the current frame once the selected time span has been used up and present the partial result together with an overlay: "Timeout". One can control the max time span reserved for rendering in the ILNumerics section of the VS Tools -> Options dialog. It is recommended to use values of less than 1 second in order to prevent the debug engine from timing out. Such timeout will be signaled by the debug engine by generating messages like "The expression cannot get evaluated because an earlier expression evaluation has timed out". If you encounter such messages frequently, decrease the timeout limit in the ILNumerics options dialog.