Library Organization

The IC Imaging Control 4 .NET Class Library is separated into multiple assemblies to limit dependencies and support scenarios where certain other libraries (e.g. System.Windows.Forms or System.Drawing) are not available.

Core Assembly

The core assembly ic4dotnet.dll contains all the main device-related functionality of IC Imaing Control 4.

Notable classes are:

• DeviceEnum is used to enumerate video capture devices.
• Grabber manages an opened video capture device as well as its data stream.
• SnapSink and QueueSink allow accessing image data through ImageBuffer objects.
• VideoWriter can be used to save images into video files.

Additional Assemblies

ic4dotnet.System.Windows.Forms

The ic4dotnet.System.Windows.Forms assembly provides Windows Forms integration:

• A display control (WinForms.Display)
• Access to builtin dialogs (WinForms.Dialogs).

This assembly is only available for Windows platforms.

ic4dotnet.System.Drawing

The ic4dotnet.System.Drawing assembly contains extension methods on ImageBuffer for interop with System.Drawing classes:

• CreateBitmapCopy converts an ImageBuffer object into a System.Drawing.Bitmap.
• CreateBitmapWrap creates a System.Drawing.Bitmap using an ImageBuffer's memory. This can be used to avoid unnecessary and possibly expensive copies of image data.

This assembly is only available for Windows platforms.

ic4dotnet.System.Windows.Media

ic4dotnet.System.Windows.Media contains similar functionality for integration with System.Windows.Media classes:

• CreateBitmapSourceCopy converts an ImageBuffer object into a System.Windows.Media.Imaging.BitmapSource.
• CopyTo copies the contents of an ImageBuffer into an existing System.Windows.Media.Imaging.WritableBitmap. This can be used to avoid unnecessary memory allocations.

This assembly is only available for Windows platforms.

ic4dotnet.OpenCvSharp

The ic4dotnet.OpenCvSharp assembly allows easy integration of the open-source OpenCvSharp library into IC Imaging Control 4 programs:

• CreateOpenCvCopy creates a new OpenCvSharp.Mat object containing a copy of the image data from an ImageBuffer.
• CreateOpenCvWrap creates a OpenCvSharp.Mat object that uses the memory of an ImageBuffer. The image buffer's memory can then be used directly as source and/or destination for OpenCV operations.

While this assembly is available for all platforms, OpenCvSharp only supports a limited selection of target platforms with the required native binary packages. Additional information can be found on the project's github page.

ic4dotnet.HalconDotNet

ic4dotnet.HalconDotNet provides helper functions for interop with MVTec's HALCON .NET library (MVTec.HalconDotNet):

• CreateHImageCopy creates a new HImage object containing a copy of the image data from an ImageBuffer.
• CreateHImageWrap creates a HImage object that uses the memory of an ImageBuffer. The image buffer's memory can then be used directly as source and/or destination for HALCON operations.
• CopyFrom copies the contents of an HImage object into an existing image ImageBuffer.
• CreateImageBufferCopy creates a new ImageBuffer with the contents of an existing HImage object.

This assembly is supported on all platforms.