Open Inventor - Examples from The Inventor Toolmaker

Chapter 2 - "Creating a Node" - Win32 DLL Version


This directory contains source code that illustrates how to create
new Inventor nodes. The examples show how to create a new
property node, a new shape node, and a new group node.

See The Inventor Mentor for an introduction to nodes.

*** This is for C++ programmers only! ***

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Changes from Inventor 2.0 to 2.1:

Minor changes were made to the Pyramid and Glow classes for
compatibility with Inventor 2.1.  When a change has been made, the
previous code and comments are identified with the comment "//2.0".

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*** This is for Win32 C++ programmers only! ***

The companion directory "02.Nodes" contains code and make files that
build the custom nodes as object files to be linked directly with a
program.  This directory "02.NodesDLL" contains code and make files
that build each custom node as a DLL that Inventor can dynamically
load at runtime!  This is essentially the same as the Inventor "DSO"
feature on SGI (and other UNIX) machines except that we provide an
example and they don't. ;-)

You will notice that only one minor change is required to each of the
source and header files in order to build the nodes as DLLs.  The
test program has slightly more modifications because it is no longer
necessary to include the header files for the custom nodes nor to
explicitly call their initClass methods.  When the Inventor file
reader encounters an unknown node it automatically attempts to load
a DLL with that name, eg. "Pyramid.DLL", and invoke its initClass.
The search path is the same as for any other DLL, i.e., directory
containing application, current directory, Windows system directory,
Windows directory then directories in the PATH environment variable.
