Release Notes for HALCON 11.0.3

This document provides the release notes for MVTec HALCON 11.0.3, as released in April 2014. HALCON 11.0.3 is primarily a maintenance release that fixes all known bugs in HALCON 11.0.2; besides, it provides added functionality.

Compatibility

Licenses

HALCON 11.0 licenses are also valid for HALCON 11.0.3. In contrast, all HALCON 10.0 licenses or licenses of earlier versions must be replaced or upgraded. Please contact your local distributor.

In a continuous effort to improve the comfort and security of licenses, our licensing software supplier provides regular updates. Along with many enhancements, a recent update unfortunately broke compatibility with parallel port dongles.
Since this version is used in HALCON 11, it is no longer possible to issue licenses bound to parallel port dongles.

HALCON Library

HALCON 11.0.3 is fully compatible with HALCON 11.0 except for the changed behavior of some operators due to bug fixes. Compared to HALCON 10.0, many extensions have been introduced. Thus, the HALCON 11.0 libraries are not compatible with HALCON 10.0 or earlier versions.

In detail, please note the following incompatibilities with respect to HALCON 11.0.2:

HALCON Applications

Applications (i.e., executables) developed with HALCON 11.0, HALCON 11.0.1, or HALCON 11.0.2 can be used with HALCON 11.0.3, i.e., HALCON 11.0.3 is binary compatible with HALCON 11.0 (except for applications that use the HALCON/C++ interface), HALCON 11.0.1, and HALCON 11.0.2.

All programs (C, C++, .NET, or COM) that have been developed with HALCON 10.0.x must be recompiled. The incompatibility with HALCON 10.0.x or earlier versions mainly concerns the binaries, with only few changes in the language interfaces. If you encounter problems during recompiling your programs, please check the detailed description of changes below and for HALCON 11.0, HALCON 11.0.1, and HALCON 11.0.2, respectively.

Please note that applications using HALCON/.NET (and HDevEngine/.NET) have local copies of the corresponding assemblies (halcondotnet.dll etc.). After installing HALCON 11.0.3, these applications would therefore use the old version of the HALCON/.NET interface together with the new version of the HALCON library. In order to benefit from the bug fixes in the HALCON/.NET interface as well, you must either replace the assemblies manually or recompile the projects. If you do not recompile the application, you need to add an application configuration file mapping the application's expected assembly version to the new version. See the Programmer's Guide for more information.

Image Acquisition Interfaces

The system requirements of the following image acquisition interfaces have been changed since HALCON 11.0.2:

If you have developed your own acquisition interfaces with HALCON 11.0, HALCON 11.0.1, or HALCON 11.0.2, you can use them with HALCON 11.0.3 without further action.

Extension Packages

Extension packages developed with HALCON 11.0, HALCON 11.0.1, or HALCON 11.0.2 can be used with HALCON 11.0.3 without further action. Extension packages developed with HALCON 10.0.x or earlier versions must be re-generated. Note that the old makefiles for HALCON/C++ must be adapted according to the sample makefile under extension_packages/halconuser.

ActivVisionTools


Major New Features of HALCON 11.0.3

Image Acquisition

Speed-Up

HALCON Library

HDevelop

HDevelop has been enhanced in various ways, e.g.,

Examples


Detailed Description of Changes in HALCON 11.0.3

Detailed release notes can be obtained for the following topics:

HDevelop

Functionality

Assistants
Program Listing/Editor
Dialogs
GUI
Code Export

Bug Fixes

HDevelop Language
Procedures
Image Acquisition Assistant
Calibration Assistant
Matching Assistant
Measure Assistant
OCR Assistant
Program Listing/Editor
Operator Window
Tools
Dialogs
General
Code Export

Examples

New Example Programs

HALCON has been extended with the following HDevelop example programs:

Modified Example Programs
Removed Example Programs

HALCON Library

Modified Operators

2D Metrology
Calibration → Camera Parameters
Identification → Bar Code
Identification → Data Code
Matching → Gray-Value-Based

Bug Fixes

2D Metrology
3D Matching → Shape-Based
3D Object Model → Creation
3D Object Model → Features
3D Object Model → Segmentation
3D Object Model → Transformations
3D Reconstruction → Binocular Stereo
3D Reconstruction → Photometric Stereo
3D Reconstruction → Sheet of Light
Calibration → Binocular
Calibration → Camera Parameters
Calibration → Hand-Eye
Calibration → Multi-View
Calibration → Rectification
Classification → Gaussian Mixture Models
Classification → K-Nearest Neighbors
Classification → Support Vector Machines
File → Images
File → Misc
File → Region
File → Tuple
Filters → Color
Filters → FFT
Filters → Geometric Transformations
Filters → Lines
Filters → Misc
Filters → Smoothing
Graphics → Drawing
Graphics → LUT
Graphics → Parameters
Graphics → Output
Graphics → Parameters
Graphics → Text
Graphics → Window
Identification → Bar Code
Identification → Data Code
Image → Acquisition
Image → Features
Legacy → XLD
Matching → Deformable
Matching → Shape-Based
Morphology → Gray Values
OCR → Segmentation
OCR → Training Files
Regions → Access
Regions → Creation
Regions → Features
Regions → Geometric Transformations
Regions → Transformations
Segmentation → Threshold
System → Parallelization
System → Serial
System → Sockets
Tools → Geometry
Tools → Hough
Tuple → Conversion
Tuple → Creation
Tuple → Selection
XLD → Features
XLD → Transformations
Error Messages
Extension Package
Parallelization
General

Procedures

Bug Fixes

HALCON/C

Bug Fixes

HALCON/C++

Speed-Up

Bug Fixes

HALCON/C++ (legacy)

Speed-Up

HALCON/.NET

Bug Fixes

HALCON/COM

Bug Fixes

HDevEngine

Bug Fixes

Language Interface Example Programs

hbench

Bug Fixes

Image Acquisition Interfaces

The latest information about new interface revisions and newly supported image acquisition devices can be found on MVTec's web server.

Misc

New Image Acquisition Interfaces

Modified Image Acquisition Interfaces

Image Acquisition Example Programs

New Image Acquisition Example Programs

Documentation

Solution Guide I (Basics)

Solution Guide II+III (Advanced)

Reference Manual

Supported Operating Systems

Windows

HALCON 11.0.3 has been compiled for the following Windows platform versions:

The setup process checks whether it is running on a 32 or 64 bit system and provides a suitable list of platform versions that can be installed.

During the installation, the environment variable HALCONARCH is set to x86sse2-win32 or x64-win64 to indicate the installed platform version. Please note that if you want to switch to another platform version, you must first install it. Then, you must adapt the environment variable HALCONARCH (see the Installation Guide for more information).

Linux

HALCON 11.0.3 has been compiled in the following Linux platform versions:

Please refer to the Installation Guide for detailed system requirements corresponding to the different Application Binary Interfaces.

The installation script checks whether it is running on a 32 or 64 bit system and provides a suitable list of platform versions that can be installed.

Mac OS X

HALCON 11.0.3 has been compiled for Mac OS X in the following platform versions:

Miscellaneous

Installation

Licensing

Example Images

New Example Images

For several of the new HDevelop example programs, new images are available. On Windows, these images will be installed automatically during the update to HALCON 11.0.3.