KINETICART STUDIO.SEQUENCES

KineticaRT Studio Sequences are written in either the C# or Visual Basic .NET languages. KineticaRT Studio does not provide any editors for these files; you can use Windows Notepad, your favorite text/code editor or the Visual Studio editors, which provide color coding and syntax checking.

KineticaRT Studio uses the standard Microsoft compilers for C# and Visual Basic so source code must be compatible with the Microsoft standards. You can make use of Microsoft's online help for the language specification, examples, design guides etc. (See Associated links) or the Visual Studio help if you have it.

Note that no extra licenses are required to use the compilers, even on the target (users) computers.

KineticaRT Studio compiles C# or Visual Basic Sequence source code files into .dll executable files which it then loads and executes.

The Sequences are genuine .NET executables which have access to the full .NET facilities so anything is possible. Since they are compiled, they will execute as fast as any other .NET executable, so performance should not be a problem.

The minimum code for a working Sequence is generated automatically when you create a new Sequence; you extend this code to achieve the required functionality.

The KineticaRT.Sequence base class provides a number of methods to assist in creating Sequences such as methods to access the KineticaRT Studio channels and a method to wait until a KineticaRT channel reaches a specified value. These are detailed in the KineticaRT Studio Programming Manual .

KineticaRT Studio allows the use of the .NET System.Diagnostics.Trace.WriteLine(string) and System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine(string) methods for diagnostic purposes within the Sequences to output the given strings to the message listbox in the Configurer window, when it is enabled.

For each Sequence file, it is possible to configure whether debug, trace, both or neither is shown. If neither are configured then the statements will be removed by the compiler and will then have no effect on performance.

When debugging using Visual Studio these methods will also output to the Visual Studio "Output" window. With "Debug" enabled you can to place breakpoints in the your Sequence code.

In addition to the standard .NET facilities, some features have been added to simplify the writing of test and control sequences. For example the wait function causes a Sequence to pause until a condition is met or a timeout is reached. Other Sequences will continue to run.

C# example:

StartEngine () ;

// Allow engine to settle before starting test

Wait ("EngineStarted") ;

DesiredEngineSpeed = 800 ;

Wait ("EngineSpeed < 850") ;

// Do tests

StartIdleTest () ;