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HDevelop User's Manual

1. 2 3 5 6 Execute gt Call Stack Selecting this item depicts a dialog see figure 2 14 that contains a list of the names of all procedures that are currently called on HDevelop s internal call stack The top most procedure call belongs to the most recently called procedure the bottom most procedure call always belongs to the main procedure Double clicking on a procedure call in the dialog makes the selected procedure call the current procedure call and thus the procedure belonging to the selected procedure call the current procedure Double clicking on a procedure call that belongs to a protected external procedure for protected external procedures see section 2 4 3 3 on page 74 you can only make the procedure the current procedure by entering the correct password in the password window W Call Stack ES gen_hom_mat3d_from_three_points main Figure 2 14 Callstack dialog 2 3 5 7 Execute gt Deactivate Execute gt Activate During testing it is often useful to prevent some lines of the program from being executed This can be achieved by selecting the appropriate lines in the program window and then selecting Execute gt Deactivate Then an asterisk is placed on the beginning of the selected lines i e the lines appear as comments in the program window and have no influence on the program during runtime The deactivated lines are still part of the program i e they are stored like all other lines and their variables
2. output FileHandle for i 0 to Width X 1 by 1 clip_region CellBorder Part 0 i Height 1 i X area_center Part Area Row Col fwrite_string FileHandle i Area 100 0 X Height fnew_line FileHandle endfor close_file FileHandle Figure 5 16 shows the measurement result 90 T T T T T wood_cells dat Anzahl 0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 Position Figure 5 16 Cell wall proportion in growth direction in percent To allow further processing of the data such as for plotting using gnuplot as in figure 5 16 it has to be written to a file Therefore a text file is opened first open_file Now you can write to this file by using fwrite_string and fnew_line Note the formatting of output when using fwrite_string The output text starts with the loop variable that is followed by a space character Thus the number is transformed into a string Finally the proportion of the cell wall in percent is concatenated to the string At this it is important that the first or second value of the expression is a string so that the following numbers are converted into strings Here denotes the concatenation of characters instead of the addition of numbers 5 9 Region Selection 149 5 9 Region Selection File name eyes dev This example explains how to handle single iconic objects In contrast to numerical data where many different functions may be executed on pa
3. 3 12 Text Text 2 1 3 Text 2 13 Table 3 6 Examples for arithmetic operations with tuples and strings 3 5 2 Assignment 95 3 5 2 Assignment In HDevelop an assignment is treated like an operator To use an assignment you have to select the op erator assign Input Result This operator has the following semantics It evaluates Input right side of assignment and stores it in Result left side of assignment However in the program text the assignment is represented by the usual syntax of the assignment operator The following example outlines the difference between an assignment in C syntax and its transformed version in HDevelop The assignment in C syntax u sin x cos y is defined in HDevelop using the assignment operator as assign sin x cos y u which is displayed in the program window as u sin x cos y If the result of the expression does not need to be stored into a variable the expression can directly be used as input value for any operator Therefore an assignment is necessary only if the value has to be used several times or if the variable has to be initialized e g for a loop A second assignment operator is available insert Input Value Index Result Itis used to assign tuple elements If the first input parameter and the first output parameter are identical the call insert Areas Area Radius 1 Areas is not presented in the program text as an operator call bu
4. 5 8 Cell Walls File name wood_cells dev In this example we will examine the alteration of the cell wall s proportion during a tree s growth The input image is a microscope view of wooden cells see figure 5 15 HIERBA RA AO Mantra TMU Figure 5 15 Microscope image of wooden cells You can clearly see the single cells and the discontinuity that is caused by the stopped growing in winter Extracting cell walls is simple because they are significantly darker The remaining difficulty lies in the computation of the distribution in growth direction i e along the image x axis First we define the width of the window over which the cell distribution is computed by assigning it to the variable X in the program Then we fetch the image size using get_image_pointer1 to get the corresponding loop parameters The broader the search range the stronger the smoothing during the measurement Now the loop starts from the left side to compute the whole image The ratio of the area of the cell walls and a rectangle of width X is computed for every value of the loop variable i The number of pixels belonging to a cell wall Area is determined by area_center This value is transformed to percent for the output 148 Program Examples X 20 read_image WoodCells1 woodcell threshold WoodCellsi CellBorder 0 120 get_image_pointer1 WoodCellsi Pointer Type Width Height open_file wood_cells dat
5. Automatic segmentation thresholding If the combo box Display is set to threshold the image from which the histogram was computed is segmented with a threshold operation with the selected minimum and maximum gray value Depend ing on the setting of the combo box Send the segmentation result is either displayed in the graphics window from which the image was originally sent Send back or in the active graphics window Send to active With the three combo boxes Color Draw and Width you can specify how the segmentation results are displayed see also Visualization gt Color Visualization gt Draw and Visualization gt Line Width below If you want to select threshold parameters for a single image display the image in the active graphics window and open the histogram tool For optimum visualization of the segmentation results it is best to set the visualization color to a color different from black or white Now set Display to threshold and interactively drag the two vertical bars until you achieve the desired segmentation result The parameters of the threshold operation can now be read off the two vertical lines If you want to select threshold parameters for an image which is derived from another image but want to display the segmentation on the original image e g if you want to select thresholds for a gradient image two different possibilities exist First you can display the derived image open the histogram tool deselec
6. dev_set_part 0 0 ImageHeight 1 ImageWidth 1 dev_display Image In this example Image is the image variable ImageHeight and ImageWidth denote its size You can query the size of an image with the operator get_image_pointer1 Please consult the HALCON Reference Manuals for more details Note that the operator dev_set_part and its HALCON library equivalent set_part is more commonly used for displaying and thereby zooming parts of images By calling it with the full size of an image as shown above you assure that the image exactly fits the window Changing display parameters If you change the way how results are displayed color line width etc in HDevelop interac tively via the menu Visualization these changes will not be incorporated in the exported pro gram We recommend to insert the corresponding Develop operators e g dev_set_color or dev_set_line_width in the HDevelop program explicitly This will result in the appropriate call set_color set_line_width etc in the exported code Code Export 130 Code Export Program Examples 131 Chapter 5 Program Examples This chapter contains examples that illustrate how to program with HDevelop To understand the exam ples you should have a basic knowledge of image analysis The user interface is described in section 1 4 on page 3 and chapter 2 on page 11 Language details are explained in chapter 3 on page 89 The examples of this chapter are also availa
7. lola Channel hr Rel Abs V Accept Display threshold y Send back Color green y Draw fri Width 4 y sj Static data Grayvalue Pixel number Min grayvalue Max grayvalue Dynamic data Pixel number min Pixel number max Figure 2 19 Online gray histogram inspection percentages when you select Abs they are displayed as the actual number of pixels having a particular gray value See the operator gray_histo in the HALCON Reference Manuals for details Sometimes it is desirable to suppress the updating of the histogram when new image data is available e g if you want to select thresholds for a gradient image but want to visualize the original image along with the segmentation see below To do so you can deselect the checkbox Accept The main part of the tool is the area in which the histogram of the image is displayed in blue This area contains static parts and parts that can be interactively manipulated The first static part is the horizontal coordinate axis which displays the gray values in the image For byte images this range is always 0 255 For all other image types e g real images the horizontal axis runs from the minimum to the maximum gray value of the image and the labeling of the axis is changed accordingly To the left of the display the vertical axis representing the frequency of the gray values is drawn in white The final static parts of the display are three
8. Language 90 Language read_image Image Name area_center Region Area Row Column mean_image Image Mean 11 11 In the above example the operator read_image has one output parameter for iconic objects Image and one input control parameter filename area_center accepts regions as input iconic and three control parameters as output Area Row Column The filter operator mean_image has one iconic parameter as input and one as output Its two input control parameters specify the size of the filter mask Input control parameters can either be variables constants or even complex expressions An expression is evaluated before it is passed to a parameter that receives the result of the evaluation Since iconic objects always are represented by variables all iconic parameters only accept variables Control output parameters must always contain variables too as they store the results of an operator evaluation 3 2 Control Types and Constants All non iconic data is represented by so called control data numerical string in HDevelop The name is derived from their respective functions within HALCON operators where they control the behaviour the effect of image processing operators e g thresholds for a segmentation operator Control parameters in HDevelop may contain arithmetic or logical operations A control data item can be of one of the following types integer real string and boolean integer and real The ty
9. all external procedures available are exported Otherwise only external procedures used by the program are exported External procedures that are protected by a password see section 2 4 3 3 on page 74 are not exported Internal procedures are always exported completely regardless if they are used or not Similar to loading the file name of the program you save is appended at the end of the menu File 2 3 3 7 File gt Print The menu item File gt Print keyboard shortcut lt Ctrl gt P enables you to print the current program Upon selecting the menu item a dialog appears in which you can configure the printing process Besides 20 Graphical User Interface the local procedures all used external procedures are printed If the option Export All External Procedures is activated see section 2 3 3 11 on page 21 not only the used ones but all available external procedures are printed External procedures that are protected by a password see section 2 4 3 3 on page 74 are not printed 2 3 3 8 Filep Print Selection In contrast to the menu item File gt Print the menu item File gt Print Selection prints only the selected part of the current procedure body 2 3 3 9 File gt Read Image The menu item File gt Read Image contains several directories from which images are usually loaded The first entry of this menu always is the directory from which the most recent image was loaded This is useful when several images from a
10. marks EA get_image_pointer1 Christof Pointer Type Width Height Iconic Variables dev_open_window 0 O Width Height black Window D dev_set_draw fill idevy_set_part 0 0 Height 1 Width 1 Interpolate 2 video half images fill_interlace Christof ImageFilled oda Smooth by averaging mean_image ImageFilled ImageMean 29 29 Segment an image using a local threshold dyn_threshold ImageFilled ImageMean RegionDynThresh 5 light idev_set_colored 12 connection RegionDynThresh ConnectedRegionsDynThresh Pointer 29799904 select_shape ConnectedRegionsDynThresh SelectedRegionsDynThresh area compactr Type byte Select regions based on gray mn e i rresh Image Width 768 dev_display IageFilled Height 575 dey_set_draw margin j 3600 dev_display Marks ioe it ImageMe RegionDy Connecte Selected Line 20 J HALCON Version 7 1 1 HDevelop Version 5 0 1 MVTec Software GmbH Munich Germany www mytec com 1996 2006 MYTec Software GmbH The hostids of this computer are DO0ea62e8711 FLEXID 6 a6305af4 Figure 2 40 Information about the current HALCON version 2 3 12 Tool Bar 65 2 3 11 2 Help gt HALCON Operators This online help is based on an HTML browser see section 6 3 on page 156 The browser will display the main page of all HALCON and HDevelop operators It is quite easy for you to browse throu
11. 26 325 Satz 4 W 850 728 1990 5 9 HELVETIA GENEVE Auti 1 3 Mill Figure 5 2 Segmentation result for stamps The area boundaries are very blurred and even a human viewer has difficulties recognizing them At first glance it seems very difficult to find a segmentation criterion There is neither a clear edge nor a significant difference between the gray values of both areas Thus it is not very promising to use an edge operator or a threshold operation One solution of this problem makes use of the different textures within the areas Cells are more textured than the part which is supplied with blood To emphasize this difference you can use a texture transfor 5 2 Capillary Vessel 135 Figure 5 3 Capillary vessel left and texture transformation right mation by Laws Texture transformations are linear filters that intensify certain frequencies which are typical for the requested texture The corresponding HALCON operator is ws You have to specify the filter size and type Both attributes determine the frequency properties In this program the filter e1 with mask size 5 x 5 is used It performs a derivation in vertical direction and a smoothing in horizontal direction Thus structures in vertical direction are intensified You cannot directly use the computed result of see 3 right because it is too speckled Therefore you must generalize the texture image by a mean filter From this you obtain the so called te
12. Iconic objects are exclusively processed by HALCON operators HALCON operators work on tuples of iconic objects which are represented by their surrogates in the HALCON data management The results of those operators are again tuples of iconic objects or control data elements For a detailed description of the HALCON operators refer to the HALCON reference manual and the remarks in section 3 5 3 on page 96 3 5 Expressions for Input Control Parameters In HDevelop the use of expressions like assignments or arithmetic operations is limited to control input parameters all other kinds of parameters must be assigned by variables 3 5 1 General Features of Tuple Operations This section intends to give you a short overview over the features of tuples and their operations A more detailed description of each operator mentioned here is given in the following sections Please note that in all following tables variables and constants have been substituted by letters These letters give information about possible limitations of the areas of definition A single letter inside these tables represents a data type Operations on these symbols can only be applied to parameters of the indicated type or to expressions that return a result of the indicated type To begin with table 3 5 specifies the names and types of the symbolic names The symbol names i a 1 and s can denote atomic tuples tuples of length 1 as well as tuples with arbitrary length La
13. JV Check only used procedures af Foundation Calibration 1D Metrology 2D Metrology 3D Metrology Bar Code Data Code OCRIOCY Matching Save Figure 2 9 The modules window 2 3 3 14 Fileb History At the bottom the menu File displays the most recently loaded files 2 3 4 Menu Edit In this menu you find all necessary functions to modify the current HDevelop procedure body displayed in the program window see section 2 4 on page 66 e HDevelop File MEGA Execute Visualization Procedures Operators Suggestions Window Help Und GEF Rego Ctrl C GEN FY Delete Find Operator Ctrl F Find Again Ctrl G Replace Variables Ctrl H Cut program line s Ctrl X Figure 2 10 The menu item Edit 26 Graphical User Interface 2 3 4 1 Edit gt Undo You may undo your previous activities via the menu item Edit gt Undo For example by selecting it three times you cancel the last three user actions The procedure to which the last undo belongs becomes the current procedure The undo item does not work for the password assignment for external procedures see section 2 4 3 3 on page 74 To undo the password assignment you either have to remove the password as long as you can edit the procedure or you quit HDevelop without saving the current program 2 3 4 2 Edit gt Redo You can also revoke undo activities by selecting Edit g
14. The first one is based on gen_tuple_const assign gen_tuple_const tuple_old 4711 tuple_new which is displayed as tuple_new gen_tuple_const tuple_old 4711 The second one is a bit tricky and uses arithmetic functions assign tuple_old 0 4711 tuple_new 3 5 5 Simple Arithmetic Operations 99 which is displayed as tuple_new tuple_old 0 4711 Here we get first a tuple of the same length with every element set to zero Then we add the constant to each element In the case of tuples with different values we have to use the loop version to assign the values to each position assign tuple for i 1 to 100 by 1 assign tuple ixi tuple endfor which is displayed as tuple for i 1 to 100 by 1 tuple tuple i i endfor In this example we construct a tuple with the square values from 1 to 1007 3 5 5 Simple Arithmetic Operations Table 3 9 shows an overview of the available simple arithmetic operations All operations are left associative except the right associative unary minus operator The evaluation usually is done from left to right However parentheses can change the order of evaluation and some operators have a higher precedence than others see section 3 5 14 on page 107 al a2 division al a2 multiplication al a2 modulus vi v2 addition and concatenation of strings al a2 subtraction a negation Table 3 9 Arithmetic operations
15. Type Width Height dev_open_window 0 0 Width Height black YVindow ID dev_set_draw fill dev_set_part 0 O Height 1 VWidth 1 threshold Image Region 128 255 dev_set_color white connection Region ConnectedRegions select_shape ConnectedRegions CompactRegions compactness and 1 5 1 8 Number CompactRegions Eyes for i 1 to Number by 1 SingleSelected CompactRegions i area_center SingleSelected Area Row Column dev_set_color green if Area gt 500 and Area 50000 dev_set_color red Eyes SingleSelected Eyes endif endfor dev_display Image dev_set_color red dev_display Eyes Figure 2 42 Program example with the PC the arrow pointing to the right insertion cursor and a break point BP e The PC is set by pressing the left mouse button only e The insertion cursor is set by pressing the left mouse button and the lt Shift gt key e A BP is set by pressing the left mouse button and the lt Ctr1 gt key Clicking on a break point again while pressing the lt Ctr1 gt key deletes it Furthermore in the column local procedure calls are marked by green and external procedures by dark green bars if you did not disable the marking in the menu item File gt Options as described in sec tion 2 3 3 11 on page 21 See section 2 4 3 for an example By clicking into the column on the left with the right mouse button you can open a context men
16. an own instance of the variable i e the variable might have different values in different proce dure calls For an example how to use dev_error_var in connection with dev_set_check see HALCONROOT examples hdevelop Graphics Mouse get_mposition dev Please note that operations concerning graphics windows and their corresponding operators have addi tional functionality as HALCON operators with corresponding names without dev_ graphics windows 2 3 8 Menu Operators 59 in HDevelop are based on HALCON windows see open_window in the HALCON reference manual but in fact they have an enhanced functionality e g history of displayed objects interactive modifica tion of size and control buttons This is also true for operators that modify visualization parameters dev_set_color dev_set_draw etc For example the new visualization parameter is registered in the parameter window when the operator has been executed You can easily check this by opening the dialog Visualization gt Set Parameters gt Pen and apply the operator dev_set_color Here you will see the change of the visualization parameters in the dialog box You have to be aware of this difference if you export dev_ to C C Visual Basic Visual Basic NET and C code In contrast to the parameter dialog for changing display parameters like color the corresponding oper ators like dev_set_color do not change to contents of the graphics window i e they don t
17. because here the main window has a reduced functionality 2 3 10 1 Window Cascade By selecting this item HDevelop arranges the program operator variable and graphics window in a cascade as you can see in figure 2 38 2 3 10 2 Window Tile When selecting this item you see the program operator variable and graphics window inside the main window They have the same size and fit exactly in the main window Thus you get a global view of the windows contents at once Notice that the four windows may shrink depending on their size to fit in the main window Figure 2 39 shows you the effect using this item 2 3 10 3 Window gt Arrange icons As in every system using windows you are able to iconify and deiconify your windows You may even move your icons on the display This might create a confusing working environment if you are handling several graphics tools simultaneously To get the HDevelop icons back on top of the main window s status bar you just have to press this button 2 3 11 Menu Help 63 HDevelop File Edit Execute Visualization Procedures Operators Suggestions YU Help AA eje o farce ES Tile Arrange icons Next Procedures main v 1 Program 2 Operator 7 Procedure 3 Variable Watch 4 Graphics Window 5 Pixel Information 6 Call Stack Figure 2 38 Window management functions 2 3 10 4 Window gt Next By using this item you move th
18. count_obj and select_obj are represented by the assignment operator 3 5 4 Tuple Creation The simplest way to create a tuple as mentioned in section 3 2 is the use of constants together with the operator assign or in case of iconic data one of its equivalents shown in table 3 8 assign empty_tuple assign 4711 one_integer assign 4711 0 815 two_numbers Language 98 Language This code is displayed as empty_tuple one_integer 4711 two_numbers 4711 0 815 This is useful for constant tuples with a fixed small length More general tuples can be created by successive application of the concatenation or the operator insert together with variables expressions or constants If we want to generate a tuple of length 100 where each element has the value 4711 it might be done like this assign tuple for i 1 to 100 by 1 assign tuple 4711 tuple endfor which is transformed to tuple for i 1 to 100 by 1 tuple tuple 4711 endfor Because this is not very convenient a special function called gen_tuple_const is available to construct a tuple of a given length where each element has the same value Using this function the program from above is reduced to assign gen_tuple_const 100 4711 tuple which is displayed as tuple gen_tuple_const 100 4711 If we want to construct a tuple with the same length as a given tuple there are two ways to get an easy solution
19. 1 12294618312 1 4279 1 00416718505 1 00426336515 1 00007240412 1 00253432078 1 0058 Marks 7 regions Line 17 Figure 1 5 After calling the operator eccentricity the output parameters are displayed in the variable window in tuple notation Graphical User Interface 11 Chapter 2 Graphical User Interface HDevelop is an integrated development environment IDE to create machine vision applications It com prises an editor an interpreter with debug functions a management unit for variables iconic and control data and extensive possibilities to visualize iconic data You may use HDevelop for rapid prototyping as well as for developing complete programs You create a program by choosing operators and specifying their parameters To do so you may use default values or values proposed by HDevelop After having selected the appropriate parameters you execute the operator and insert it into the program text 1 e the program window You can modify and verify your generated program interactively All intermediate results variables are displayed graphically images regions and polygons XLD or textually numbers and strings After starting the HDevelop as described in section 1 4 on page 3 the main window will appear on your screen see also figure 2 1 on page 15 It includes the following windows e aprogram window e an operator window e a variable window and e a graphics window In
20. 124 156 return Return 53 111 RGB 34 35 Run 4 Runtime error 116 runtime error 29 150 SaveAs 49 segmentation 133 151 select_gray SelectGray 9 39 select_obj Select0bj 96 97 150 select_shape SelectShape 8 9 38 39 84 133 137 140 144 146 149 select_shape_xld SelectShapeX1d 38 39 Semantics 89 set_check SetCheck 58 set_color SetColor 56 129 156 157 set_line_style SetLineStyle 128 set_line_width SetLineWidth 129 set_paint SetPaint 57 set_part SetPart 129 set_system SetSystem 91 set_system 128 shape features 40 sigma_image Sigmalmage 61 skeleton Skeleton 61 smallest_rectanglel SmallestRectanglel 40 133 smallest_rectangle2 SmallestRectangle2 41 smooth_image SmoothImage 61 smoothing filter 143 sobel_amp SobelAmp 153 status bar HDevelop 65 stop 111 stop Stop 53 55 111 String 100 160 Concatenation 94 Operations 100 Suggestions menu HDevelop 60 Alternatives 61 Keywords 61 Predecessor 61 See also 61 Successor 61 Syntax 89 terminate 30 test_region_point TestRegionPoint 58 text file 148 texture energy 135 texture_laws TextureLaws 135 textures 134 threshold Threshold 6 37 133 146 153 title bar HDevelop 15 tool bar 65 Transformations 7 true 91 159 Tuple 84 160 Arithmetic 94 Concatenation 95 96 tuple 54 79 Type 82 160 boolean 91 94 103 159 Control parameter 89
21. 2 3 11 on page 63 Under UNIX the availability of one of the following browsers is checked in that order firefox mozilla netscape opera konqueror galeon Under Windows the default browser is used Besides HTML the documentation is available in PDF format as well To display the manuals the Adobe file viewer Acrobat Reader is included in the distribution for Windows systems This viewer is not activated from HDevelop but has to be started from the Windows start menu 6 4 Warning and Error Windows Warning and error windows are popups that make the user aware of user errors Usually they interrupt the faulty actions with a description of the error For this purpose information about the kind of the error is determined during the execution Figure 6 1 shows an example of an error window 6 5 Restrictions Not every HALCON operator that is available in HALCON C or HALCON C can or should be used in HDevelop There are two reasons for this On the one hand the HALCON system is influenced by HDevelop so deeply that some operators don t behave like in a normal user program Usually this con cerns the graphical operators like set_color For this class of operators specific versions for HDevelop are available e g dev_set_color 6 5 Restrictions 157 3 syntax error in parameter 1 lt car gt Figure 6 1 Example for an error window On the other hand some low level operators exist like reset_obj_db or clear_o
22. 90 Iconic object 89 93 integer 90 integer 93 94 100 159 Numerical 90 real 90 93 94 100 159 160 string 90 93 94 159 160 Undo 26 66 UNIX 4 19 114 126 Variable 92 168 Index _ 93 Control 82 84 Iconic 57 82 Visualization 21 Variable window 24 82 160 variable window HDevelop 11 29 80 iconify 58 62 Visual Basic 1 19 23 export of HDevelop programs 117 Visual Basic NET 1 19 23 export of HDevelop programs 120 Visual Basic NETexport 1 Visual Basicexport Visualization 32 Visualization menu HDevelop Clear Window 33 33 Close Window 33 Color 43 57 Colored 8 43 57 Draw 43 57 Feature Histogram Info 38 66 Gray Histogram Info 35 66 Lut 43 57 Open Window 32 Paint 44 57 Pixel Info 33 66 Region Info 38 39 66 Reset Parameters 33 Set Parameters 43 44 58 66 Lut 46 Paint 44 Pen 45 59 Zoom 45 Shape 43 57 Size Window 33 42 Zooming 34 42 66 Reset 57 watersheds Watersheds 61 while 109 127 159 while While 53 67 109 111 Window menu HDevelop 62 Arrange icons 62 Cascade 62 Next 63 Tile 62 others 63 Windows 3 114 126 write_string WriteString 43 XLD 38 43 82 160 features histogram 38 zooming HDevelop graphics window 34 42 45
23. In other words it illustrates what you can enter into a parameter slot of an operator or procedure call In the simplest case this is the name of a variable but it might also be an expression like sqrt A Besides control structures like loops and the semantics of parameter passing are described Chapter 5 on page 131 explains the application of this language in image analysis Note that the HALCON operators themselves are not described in this chapter For this purpose refer to the HAL CON reference manual All program examples used in this chapter can also be found in the directory HALCONROOT examples hdevelop Manuals HDevelop 3 1 Basic Types of Parameters HALCON distinguishes two kinds of data control data numerical string and iconic data images re gions etc By further distinguishing input from output parameters we get four different kinds of parameters These four kinds always appear in the same order in the HDevelop parameter list Table 3 1 shows their order of appearance iconic input iconic output control input control output Table 3 1 Order of appearance of the four basic parameter types As you see iconic input objects are always passed as the first parameter s followed by the iconic output objects The iconic data is followed by the control data and again the input parameters succeed the output parameters Each parameter is separated from its neighbours by a comma
24. Procedures 71 fact that other programs containing it do not update the procedure calls When loading these programs you get a warning and the procedure calls are disabled If the changes were applied to a procedure that is called from inside a protected external procedure that procedure call is not even updated in the current program Cancel dismisses the dialog 2 4 3 2 Creating Procedures Depending on the corresponding procedure options and a possible selection of lines in the program window there are different ways on how a procedure can be created When activating the button Create the program lines marked in the program window are copied and inserted in the program body of the new procedure If the last selected program line is not a return operator a return call is added at the end of the procedure body If no lines are selected in the program window the newly created procedure body contains the return operator By default a local procedure is created If you want to create an external procedure instead you have to disable the check box local and optionally specify chapter and section Additionally you get informa tion about the path the procedure is stored in which is the first path you determined in Procedures gt Edit External Procedure Paths see section 2 3 7 11 on page 50 Further section 2 4 3 3 on page 74 shows how to protect an external procedure by a password so that only authorized persons can view and modify i
25. String examples boolean The constants true and false belong to the type boolean The value true is internally repre sented by the number 1 and the value false by 0 This means that in the expression Val true the effective value of Val is set to 1 In general every integer value 4 0 means true Please note that some HALCON operators take logical values for input e g set_system In this case the HALCON operators expect string constants like true or false rather than the represented values true or false In addition to these general types there are special constants and the type tuple which are specific to HALCON or HDevelop respectively constants There are constants for the return value result state of an operator The constants can be used together with the operator dev_error_var and dev_set_check These constants represent the normal return value of an operator so called messages For errors no constants are available In table 3 4 all return messages can be found There exist more than 400 error numbers internally see the Extension Package Programmer s Manual appendix A on page 113 Language 92 Language Constant Meaning Value H_MSG_TRUE No error for tests true 2 H_MSG_FALSE For tests false 3 H_MSG_VOID No result could be computed 4 H_MSG_FAIL Operator did not succeed 5 Table 3 4 Return values for operators tuple The control types are only used within the gen
26. a asin a acos a atan a atan2 al a2 sinh a cosh a tanh a sine of a cosine of a tangent of a arc sine of a in the interval 7 2 7 2 a 1 1 arc cosine a in the interval 7 2 7 2 a 1 1 arc tangent a in the interval 7 2 7r 2 a co 00 arc tangent a1 a2 in the interval 7 7 hyperbolic sine of a hyperbolic cosine of a hyperbolic tangent of a Table 3 15 Trigonometric functions 3 5 11 Exponential Functions 105 3 5 11 Exponential Functions All these functions work on tuples of numbers as arguments The input can either be of type integer or real However the resulting type will be of type real The functions are applied to all tuple values and the resulting tuple has the same length as the input tuple For pow and 1dexp the two input tuples have to be of equal length Table 3 16 shows the provided exponential functions exp a exponential function e log a natural logarithm In a a gt 0 logi0 a decadic logarithm log p a a gt 0 pow al a2 ldexp al a2 al a2 a122 Table 3 16 Exponential functions 3 5 12 Numerical Functions The numerical functions shown in Table 3 17 work on different data types min t minimum value of the tuple min2 t1 t2 element wise minimum of two tuples max t maximum value of the tuple max2 t1 t2 element wise maximum of two tuples sum t sum of all elements of the tuple or string conca
27. an interruption of the program Therefore an explicit error handling is needed The complete program is given below 5 11 Road Scene 151 read_image Image mreut dev_close_window dev_open_window 0 0 1 1 black WindowID dev_display Image Button 1 while Button 4 dev_error_var Error 1 dev_set_check give_error get_mposition WindowID Row Column Button dev_error_var Error 0 dev_set_check give_error if Error H_MSG_TRUE get_grayval Image Row Column Grayval dev_set_color black disp_rectangle1 WindowID 0 0 22 85 dev_set_color white set_tposition WindowID 15 2 write_string WindowID Row Column Grayval endif endwhile After loading an image and opening a window we enter the loop to query the mouse position Because the operator get_mposition might cause an exception we call dev_set_check to declare that HDevelop should not stop if an exception occurs dev_set_check has to be called before and after the critical call s If we want to know which error occurred we have to specify the variable in which the return value will be stored This is done by using dev_error_var Now get_mposition can be called independent of the context To check if the coordinates are valid the error variable is compared to one of the constants for standard return values like H_MSG_TRUE or H_MSG_FAIL If the call succeeded this coordinate is used
28. and 12 colors If all regions are displayed with one color you have to use the operator connection beforehand You can check this also with the operator count_obj 2 3 6 13 Visualization gt Color This item allows you to choose a color for displaying segmentation results regions and XLDs text write_string and general line drawings e g 3D plots contour lines and bar charts The number of colors which are available in the submenu depends on the graphics display i e the number of bits used for displaying After selecting a color the previously displayed region or XLD object will be redisplayed with this color The default color is white 2 3 6 14 Visualization gt Draw Here you can select a visualization mode to display regions It can either be filled item fi11 or the borders are displayed only item margin The border line thickness of the displayed regions is specified using the menu item Line Width see figure 2 24 on page 45 2 3 6 15 Visualization gt Line Width Here you determine the line width for painting XLDs borders of regions or other types of lines You can select between a wide range of widths using the submenu 2 3 6 16 Visualization gt Shape Here you specify the representation shape for regions Thus you are able to display not only the region s original shape but also its enclosing rectangle or its enclosing circle 2 3 6 17 Visualization gt Lut This menu item activates different look up
29. are shown in the operator window 4 Operator Procedure iof x Operator Procedure reaa read_cam_par read_component_model read_contour_xld_arc_info Figure 2 51 Operator selection in the operator name field If you are already more familiar with HDevelop it is useful to select an operator or procedure in the operator name field However in order to do so you obviously have to be familiar with the operator names 2 5 2 Parameter Display The parameter display is the main part of the operator window It is empty in its initial state If you have selected an operator or procedure call HDevelop displays its parameter data i e name number type and default values in the display 2 5 2 Parameter Display 79 e In the first column of the operator window you find the parameter names e The second column consists of the text fields which contain variable names in case of iconic and control output parameters and expressions in case of control input parameters If you want to change the suggestions offered by the system variable names or default values you may do so either manually or by pressing the arrow button connected with the respective text field This opens a list containing a selection of already defined variables and other reasonable values from the operator knowledge base By clicking the appropriate item you set the text field and the list disappears e The third column indicates the parameter
30. are still needed like all other variables To reverse this action select Execute gt Activate Note that you can insert a real comment into your program by using the operator comment 2 3 5 8 Execute gt Set Break Point Execute gt Clear Break Point These menu items set or clear a break point on the line s that are currently selected in the program In most cases however it is easier to set and clear individual break points pressing the left mouse button and the lt Ctr1 gt key in the left column of the program window as described in section 2 4 on page 66 2 3 5 9 Execute gt Clear All Break Points With this menu item you can clear all break points in the current HDevelop program 32 Graphical User Interface 2 3 5 10 Execute gt Reset Program With the menu item Execute gt Reset Program you can reset the current HDevelop program to its initial state The main procedure becomes the current procedure and the call stack is cleared of all procedure calls except the main procedure call The latter is reset i e all variables have undefined values and the program counter is set to the first executable line of the main procedure The break points however are not cleared This menu item is useful for testing and debugging programs 2 3 6 Menu Visualization Via this menu you can open or close graphics windows and clear their displays Furthermore you may specify their output behavior during runtime All items which
31. concepts Furthermore you will learn the main aspects of HDevelop s graphical user interface for more details see chapter 2 on page 11 In this example the task is to detect circular marks attached to a person s body in a gray value image The program can be found in the file AHALCONROOT examples HDevelop Manuals HDevelop marks dev You start HDevelop under Windows by calling Start gt Programs gt MVTec HALCON gt HDevelop lt O 2 5 3 O pue Introducing HDevelop Under UNIX HDevelop is started from the shell like any other program Optionally an application name can be specified as a parameter hdevelop lt File gt dev This application is then loaded This is identical to an invocation of HDevelop without any parameter and a subsequent loading of the application If you want to run the application immediately after it has been loaded invoke HDevelop as follows hdevelop run lt File gt dev This is equivalent to starting HDevelop loading the application and then selecting Execution gt Run in the menu bar of HDevelop After starting HDevelop your first step is to load the image marks tif from the directory ZHALCONROOT images You may perform this step in three different ways e First you may specify the operator name read_image in the operator window s input text field e Secondly you may select this operator via the menu item Operators gt File gt Images e The most oft
32. different names The value of a variable iconic or control is undefined until the first assignment defines it the variable hasn t been instantiated yet A read access to an undefined variable leads to a runtime error Variable lt x gt not instantiated HDevelop provides a pre defined variable named _ single underscore You can use this variable for output control parameters whose value you are not interested in Please note that it is not allowed to use this variable for HDevelop specific operators chapters Control and Develop in the HALCON reference manual Instantiated variables contain tuples of values Depending on the kind of the variable the data items are either iconic objects or control data The length of the tuple is determined dynamically by the performed operation A variable can get new values any number of times but once a value has been assigned the variable will always keep being instantiated unless you select the menu item Execute gt Reset Program The content of the variable is deleted before the variable is assigned with new values The concept of different kinds of variables allows a first coarse typification of variables control or iconic data whereas the actual type of the data e g real integer string etc is undefined until the variable gets assigned with a concrete value Therefore it is possible that the type of a new data item differs from that of the old 3 4 Operations on Iconic Objects
33. displayed with the HDevelop operator or by double clicking on an icon are part of the history You may change the size of the graphics window interactively by gripping the window border with the mouse Then you can resize the window by dragging the mouse pointer After this size modification the window content is redisplayed Now you see the same part of the window with changed zoom The menu area of the graphics window has an additional function If the mouse cursor is in this area the look up table of the window is reactivated This is necessary if other programs use their own look up table Thus if there is a strange graphics window presentation you may load the proper look up table by placing the mouse near the buttons If you want to specify display parameters for a window you may select the menu item Visualization in the menu bar Here you can set the appropriate parameters by clicking the desired item see on page 32 The parameters you have set this way are used for the active window The effects of the 2 7 Graphics Window 87 new parameters will be applied directly to the last object of the window history and alter its parameters only For further information on parameter effects please refer to the appropriate HALCON operators in the reference manual 88 Graphical User Interface Language 89 Chapter 3 Language The following chapter introduces the syntax and the semantics of the HDevelop language
34. error message in a dialog window This might not be useful in Visual Basic The standard way to handle this in Visual Basic is by using the On Error Goto command This allows to access the reason for the exception and to continue accordingly Thus for HDevelop programs containing error handling dev_error_var the corresponding code is automatically included Please note that a call of dev_ set_check give_error has no influence on the operator call The exception will always be raised This is also true for messages like H_MSG_FAIL which are not handled as exceptions in C for example Code Export 120 Code Export When handling exceptions you also have to be aware that the COM interface always resets the output parameters at the beginning of the operator execution Thus when the exception occurs output variables are set to Nothing Therefore you cannot use the values of variables used as output parameters of the operator causing the exception 4 3 Code Generation for Visual Basic NET This section describes how to create a HALCON application in Visual Basic NET starting from a program developed in HDevelop HALCON can be used together with Visual Basic NET based on the COM interface of HALCON A detailed description of this interface can be found in the Programmer s Guide part III on page 69 4 3 1 Basic Steps 4 3 1 1 Export The first step is to export the program using the menu File gt Save As Here select th
35. file the current procedure is 50 Graphical User Interface saved together with all procedures that can be called directly or indirectly from the procedure If the selected file format is of type HDevelop an empty main procedure is added to the file Note that if the selected file format corresponds to one of the supported HDevelop export languages C C Visual Basic Visual Basic NET or C the exported file will not contain a main or similar function and the exported file will not work as a standalone application If the current procedure is the main procedure Procedures gt Save Current As has the same effect as File gt Save As 2 3 7 8 Procedures gt Print Current The menu item Procedures gt Print Current enables you to print the current procedure s program body Upon selecting the menu item a dialog appears in which you can configure the printing process 2 3 7 9 Procedures gt Make All Local With this menu item you can change all of your procedures to become local If your program contains protected external procedures HDevelop issues a warning and modifies only the procedures that are not protected Individual procedures can be made local or external via the check box local in the proce dures interface see section 2 4 3 1 on page 69 For changing the edit status of an external procedure see section 2 4 3 3 on page 74 2 3 7 10 Procedures gt Make All External Similar to the menu item Procedures gt Ma
36. for this you can click into any of the segmented regions and the histogram of the image within that region will be computed and shown If you click into a part of the image that is not contained in any of the overlaid regions the histogram of the entire image will be displayed 4 The same mechanism is used for regions that have gray value information e g image objects created by reduce_domain or add_channels Here the histogram of the image object you click into will be displayed Note that when the graphics window the image was sent from is cleared the histogram is not reset When a multi channel image e g a RGB color image is sent to the tool by default the histogram of the first channel is displayed The combo box Channel lets you select the channel from which to compute the histogram The radio box in the upper center of the tool lets you select whether to display the histogram with relative or absolute frequencies When you select Rel the frequencies of individual gray values are displayed as 2Yes only roughly by a factor of 2 since the image is scaled such that the red square that indicates the mouse pointer position is located in the middle of the zooming window Therefore the zoom factor is adjusted to display one pixel more than the power of 2 indicated by the zooming factor The width and height of the zoomed part of the image hence are 28 f 1 where f is the zooming factor 36 Graphical User Interface
37. graphics windows yet to be opened The origin of the graphics window is the upper left corner with the coordinates 0 0 The x values column increase from left to right the y values increase from top to bottom Normally the coordinate system of the graphics window corresponds to the the most recently displayed image which is auto matically zoomed so that every pixel of the image is visible The coordinate system can be changed interactively using the menu Visualization gt Set Parameters gt Zoom see section 2 3 6 on page 32 or with the operator dev_set_part see section 2 3 8 2 on page 55 Every time an image with another size is displayed the coordinate system will be adapted automatically Each window has a history that contains all e objects and e display parameters that have been displayed or changed since the most recent Clear or display of an image This history is used for redrawing the contents of the window The history is limited to a maximum number of 30 redraw actions where one redraw action contains all objects of one displayed variable Other output like text or general graphics like disp_line or disp_circle or iconic data that displayed using HALCON operators like disp_image or disp_region are not part of the history and are not 86 Graphical User Interface Graphics Window cun Figure 2 55 HDevelop s graphics window redrawn Only the object classes image region and XLD that are
38. in RGB space three channels with red green and blue values three colored bars are used If the gray value is below 1 the gauge is white background If the value is above 255 the gauge is black or colored for RGB images Below the gauge the gray values are displayed as numbers If more than three channels are present only the gray value of the first channel is displayed Below the gray values the coordinates of the mouse position is displayed Below these the size pixel type and the number of channels are shown 2 3 6 6 Visualization gt Zooming With this menu item a tool for real time viewing of zoomed parts of an image object is opened Fig ure 2 18 shows the layout of the real time zooming window Graphics Window OF x Zooming Zooming factor 3 y Row Colm Figure 2 18 Real time zooming The upper part of the tool contains a window of fixed size 256 x 256 in which the part of the graphics window over which the mouse pointer is located is displayed enlarged In the zooming window this 2 3 6 Menu Visualization 35 pixel is marked by a red square its coordinates are displayed at the bottom of the zooming window The factor by which the enlargement is done can be adjusted with the combo box Zooming factor A zooming factor of 0 corresponds to displaying the contents of the graphics window in to normal resolution i e one pixel in the image object corresponds to one pixel in the zooming
39. in the lower combo box see figure 2 29 As this works only for procedures having the same interface in case you want to change the interface of a procedure it is recommended to rename it first then replace it and finally change the interface When changing the interface of an external procedure you should be aware that for external procedures the changings are applied in all programs using it As inside another program using the same external procedure no information about the changes exist when loading it HDevelop issues a warning and disables the procedure calls The replacement of procedures works only for procedures that are not protected by a password For a protected procedure an error message is raised and the old procedure call is retained Generally when a procedure is replaced by another procedure both procedures are still available but in case of local procedures only as long as no Procedures gt Delete Current or Procedures gt Delete All Unused is applied Replace Procedure Calls i xj Source mwin o Replace init_writing2 init_writing2 draw _roi Replace Figure 2 29 Replace procedure calls 2 3 7 7 Procedures gt Save Current As HDevelop allows you to save or export the current procedure to a file 1f it is a local procedure For external procedures the menu entry is disabled A file selection dialog similar to the one of File gt SaveAs see section 2 3 3 6 on page 19 is opened and after selecting a
40. is to determine the threshold values locally e g from a bar chart Another solution might be the definition of a local environment by an n x n window This method is used in the example The window s mean value is used as an approximation of the background intensity This can be done by applying a low pass filter such as a mean filter or a Gaussian filter The window size n defines the size of the local environment and should approximately be twice as large as the objects to search for Since they show an average diameter of 15 pixels a mask size of 31 is used The resulting pixels are specified by the comparison of the original gray values with the mean image To reduce problems caused by noise you add a constant to the mean image 3 The appropriate program segment looks as follows mean_image Particle Mean 31 31 dyn_threshold Particle Mean Small 3 light The operator dyn_threshold compares two images pixel by pixel You can see the segmentation result in figure 5 6 left As we see all objects have been found Unfortunately the edges of the large particles and several very small regions that emerged due to the noisy image material were found too We first try to suppress the edges One way is to eliminate all objects that exceed a certain maximum size You can do this by calling connection Small SmallSingle select_shape SmallSingle ReallySmall area and 1 300 By the same method you might als
41. mageriled y timage object Imagemean ImageMean y image object y textent x integer extent y finteger Procedures main X Creste Interface dev_close_window read_image Christof marks get_image_pointer1 Christof Pointer Type Width Height dev_open_window 0 0 Width Height black WindowID Variable Watch Iconic Variables ImageMe Pointer 24073264 Type byte Width 768 Height 575 3600 WindowlD contains one integer 3600 Line 8 Figure 1 2 With the help of the opened combo box you may specify a reasonable filter size for the operator mean_image In the next step you try to separate bright from dark pixels in the image using a thresholding operation In this case a segmentation using the simple thresholding operator threshold does not result in a satis fying output Hence you have to use the dynamic thresholding operator dyn_threshold For execution you need the original image i e the interpolated full image and an image to compare containing the thresholds You obtain this image by using the smoothing filter e g mean_image As input image you choose your original image ImageFilled After estimating the marks size in pixels you specify a filter size which is approximately twice the marks size compare the HALCON Reference Manual entry for dyn_threshold To choose the operator mean_image you traverse the menu hierarch
42. non standard directory must be read The remaining entries except the last one are the directories contained in the environment variable HALCONIMAGES The final directory denoted by is the current working directory of the HDevelop program Under Windows is by default set to HALCONROOT examples hdevelop Under UNIX corresponds to the directory in which HDevelop was started SSHDevelop 3 Edit Execute Visualization Procedures Operators Suggestions Window Help te Oi elele pole llau Insert Insert Procedures Open Example Program Save Ctrl S Save as ri Ear Enmbeejecton Read Image C Program FilesiM WTectHALCONtexamplesihdevelop C Program FilestMWTectHALCONtimages D images Cleanup Print selected lines in the current program Figure 2 6 The menu item File gt Read Image When any of the directories is selected an image file selection box appears Again its functionality is similar to the dialog described in menu item File gt Open Figure 2 7 shows an example of this dialog After selecting a file name the name of the variable for the image in the current HDevelop procedure has to be selected To do this a small dialog appears after pressing Open or double clicking a file For easy handling HDevelop suggests a name derived from the selected file name You may adopt or edit this name If you want to use a name
43. object edges opening circle Small SmallClean 2 5 Here a circle is used as the structuring element of the opening operation The operator preserves regions only that may at least cover a circle of radius 2 5 Smaller regions are eliminated Figure 5 7 shows the result of the segmentation with noise removal on the left side The right side contains the final result Finally we would like to show within this example how to select regions with the mouse interactively At this a loop is executed until you press the middle or right mouse button When pressing a mouse button the operator get_mbutton returns the button that was pressed and the position coordinates where it was pressed This information is used to select the chosen object In the following you see the corresponding program part 5 4 Annual Rings 139 w e e gt e eo wets p es wets e j e de e 0 p f oe e o Re ey e s e s t a 5 a z 2 gt a e A e of E e a a E 7 E oe pS me e eee gt ta eee bt Ve 4 s ee 4 ee 8 m e ba oe de s ba ees e s a e ry ig 1 LA as e ry d 1 LA s s TPAR i e P ee i Q gt e y lt p Figure 5 7 Noise removed segmentation left and final result right dev_clear_window WindowID connection SmallClean SmallSingle Button 1 dev_set_color red while Button 1 get_mbutton WindowID Row Column Button sel
44. oe Re A 125 4 6 General Aspects of Code Generation s s e ce e cr ee ee Bae ee 126 4 6 1 User Defined Code Blocks a raea ee et 4 6 2 AGHONMNIGN o oo oe Ghee Re Ee Ee ewe E AOS Tor LOOPS se eoe Eh A BG aD ao 464 Protected External Procedures 2 4 ee eR RE eM a ES AGS System Parmeter hab 4 ea Ee eh bee be bt bee eA 46 6 Graphics WIRGGWS cc ceos gp RR E eee ew EOE eS 5 Program Examples al Siamp Segmentation o se wwe A PRA eee ee ee bee a 22 capillary Vessel ps ie ee ew tide Be oe ER As ee Se e Se ee a BS PARTES ad a A ERS eG OER ERA EES MESSRS SA Anmal RHES oe a ee ROR ES A ee EGG eG Day DOMINA oe paa ea See a ee ee eee ee be a Gee eS 50 Calibration Plate lt o s s eio aoga a eA EH ERE ESA Ir D ok ceca eer A A Se ER Ae eee e Be O Doe NCSU Walle oc ge es ew ee ES De Be a D o e SA Sayed We Baers eee SS Region Selecion spa oy ee RR RRR EE SRR Oa Ee wR Ee GS ol Exception Handing 6 2 4 be Pah BOSD bole de Be ee ee Bh Sex SII Road Scene oo kb we bw e Aw we hk dw eee ea be PS aes 6 Tips amp Tricks 61 Keycode scc ce ke hee ew ee he A ea oe eae ee 6 2 Interactions Dunne Program Bxecutigm lt 2 ea siue 28 0446 44855 2 os C3 Online Help oosporo Ae aks A RE OH CE Bee OS 04 Warming and Broo Windows ops oe ae ee BESS eet e a eed O gt REBSICICHODOS in peed Seek eee ee RR ee RE EG we eR ES Se ee A Glossary Index 131 131 133 136 139 141 143 144 147 149 150 151 155 155 156 156 156 156 15
45. of an already created iconic variable a combo box offers you all iconic variable names To do so you click the button on the right side of the text field Note that the reuse of a variable name deletes the old content and replaces it with the new image 2 3 3 Menu File 21 Look in images ae LJ autobahn clips rings barcode Dare stamps E bitrot board Fonts xing E bkas bvlab_2p a metal parts El all El bottle2 J bvlab_hp C ocrcolor El alphal El brycecanyo calib O passat E alpha2 Bal caltab LI capacitors a pen 50 angio part 160 claudia card pendulum E audiz E clip C cd_cover Oradius gauges al autobahn la combine Files of type fall Files y Cancel Open as read only My Network P gt File name a bd _ Cancel Ai Figure 2 7 The dialog window to load an image 2 3 3 10 File gt Cleanup The menu item File gt Cleanup deletes all unused variables iconic and control data from the current procedure These are variables in the variable window that are no longer used in any operator or pro cedure call in the current procedure body This can happen after the deletion of program lines or after editing variable names because the corresponding variables are not deleted automatically You may use this menu item during a longer editing process to reorganize your variable window see also section 2 6 on page 82 2 3 3 11 File gt Options The menu item File gt Options op
46. one To remove the password and thus turn the protected external procedure into a not protected external procedure again press the Change Edit Status button and thus activate the password window This time you do not assign any password but press first the Clear and then the Ok button For turning a protected external procedure into a local procedure it is sufficient to activate the check box local Again changes only become valid by submitting them by the Ok button of the procedure interface dialog and saving the program 2 5 Operator Window 77 To change the status of external procedures with Procedures gt Edit External Procedure Passwords instead follow the instructions given in section 2 3 7 12 on page 50 To choose the approach suited best for your task have a look at the main differentiating characteristics of both approaches e Procedures gt Edit External Procedure Passwords is restricted to the handling of exter nal procedures To change a procedure from local to external or vice versa you have to use the procedure interface dialog e An external procedure has to be created inside the procedure interface dialog So during the creation of the procedure it is recommended to use the procedure interface dialog to define its first edit status Edit External Procedure Passwords is then suited to easily change the edit status and password afterwards e When entering the password in the separate password window after trying to
47. page 12 program execution is always continued at the top most procedure call which in most cases corresponds to the current procedure call The procedure body displayed in the program window see section 2 4 on page 66 belongs to the current procedure e HDevelop Visualization Procedures Operators Suggestions Window Help Jal Hee Step Into F7 iol x P Step Out F8 IS Stop ES lel x j lc Call Stack ioj Activate F3 Deactivate F4 Set Break Point Clear Break Point Clear All Break Points c Reset Program Execute next program F5 Figure 2 13 The menu item Execute 2 3 5 1 Execute gt Run If you select Execute gt Run keyboard shortcut F5 HDevelop executes your program starting at the PC s position in the program window All following program lines are going to be performed until the end of the current program After the execution is finished the main procedure becomes the current procedure Note that a break point stop instruction or runtime error may interrupt the execution of your program 2 3 5 Menu Execute 29 During the execution of operator or procedure calls the following special behavior occurs e Although the mouse pointer indicates that HDevelop is not ready to handle user input clock shaped mouse pointer you may initiate limited activities For example if you double click variables in the variable window see section 2 6 on p
48. s default type in parentheses Please refer to the following rules on how parameters obtain their values and how you may specify them Iconic input parameters Possible inputs for these parameters are iconic variables of the corresponding list If there is no need to execute the operator or procedure call immediately you may even specify new variable names i e names that do not already exist in the variable window but will be instantiated later by adding further operators or procedure calls to the program body In any case you have to specify iconic parameters exclusively with variable names It is not possible to use expressions Iconic output parameters These parameters contain default variables which have the same names as the parameters them selves If a variable with the same name as the output parameter is already being used a number is added to the name to make it unique Because the parameter names characterize the computed result very well you may adopt these default names in many cases Besides this you are free to choose arbitrary names either by yourself or by opening the list see above If you use a vari able that already has a value this value is deleted during execution before overwriting it with new results It is possible to specify a variable both in an input and output position Control input parameters These parameters normally possess a default value As an alternative you may use the text field s button
49. save 18 19 stop 29 55 status bar 65 title bar 15 variable window 11 29 80 iconify 58 62 HDevEngine 1 2 Help menu HDevelop 63 About 63 HALCON News WWW 65 HALCON Operators 65 HDevelop Language 65 History 86 Iconic data 159 Iconic object 82 89 159 iconic object 149 if 109 159 if 1 33 67 109 ifelse 109 ifelse Ifelse 53 67 109 Image 82 159 image channel image matrix 34 color 43 RGB 34 35 gray value histogram 35 Index 165 load 20 mean_image MeanImage 6 7 61 90 135 multi channel 40 139 pixel median_image MedianImage 61 type 34 memory management 133 region of interest ROD 146 152 153 menu bar HDevelop 15 size 34 Edit 25 26 27 66 insert 115 Execute 28 28 29 32 66 insert Insert 53 54 95 98 File 4 16 16 17 21 23 25 29 50 57 Insertion cursor 66 67 58 05 06 71 72 intensity Intensity 41 Help 63 63 65 Interaction 156 Operators 4 6 8 53 53 55 59 60 Interface 69 Procedures 47 47 48 50 69 interface 13 Suggestions 60 61 intersection 146 Visualization 8 32 35 38 39 42 46 intersection Intersection 140 57 59 66 Window 62 62 63 junctions_skeleton min_max_gray MinMaxGray 41 JunctionsSkeleton 61 Miscellaneous 155 moments_gray_plane MomentsGrayPlane 42 mouse handling 12 multi channel image 40 kbshort CtrlX 26 kbshort F7 30 kbshort F8 30 keyboard shortcuts lt Ctrl gt C 26 N
50. the icon name For an activated icon all operators or procedure calls that use the corresponding variable are marked in the program area with a black rectangle on the left Double clicking with the left mouse button on an icon displays the data in the active graphics window If you use images of different sizes in a program the system uses the following output strategy for an automatic adaption of the zooming Every window keeps track of the size of the most recently displayed image If you display an image with a different size the system modifies the graphics window coordinate system in a way that the image is visible completely in the graphics window If a partial zooming has been activated before see section 2 7 it is going to be suppressed 84 Graphical User Interface Normally regions images and XLDs are represented in variable icons Besides this there are three exceptions which are shown by special icons e Undefined variables are displayed as a question mark 7 icon You may to write but not read them because they do not have any values Brackets are used if a variable is instantiated but does not contain an iconic object empty tuple This may be the case using operators like select_shape with wrong specified thresh olds or using operator gen_empty_obj Such a value might be reasonable if you want to collect iconic objects in a variable gradually in a loop using concat_obj Here an empty tuple is used as star
51. the loop In the program ming languages it has the value with which the condition becomes false for the first time In HDevelop it contains the end value which was calculated when the loop was entered Looking at the mentioned points we recommend to program according to the following rules 1 Don t modify the loop variable or the step value inside the loop If you need this behavior use the while loop 2 Don t use the loop variable after the loop Code Export 128 Code Export 4 6 4 Protected External Procedures As described for the different programming languages HDevelop procedures are exported automatically to procedures or subroutines of the selected programming language This does not hold for the pro tected external procedures described in section 2 4 3 3 on page 74 These procedures are protected by a password so that they cannot be viewed and modified by unauthorized users Thus as long as they are protected by the password they can not be exported to any programming language 4 6 5 System Parameters You should know that HDevelop performs some changes of system parameters of HALCON by calling the operator set_system see the reference manual This might cause the exported program not to produce identical output If such a problem arises you may query the system parameters by means of get_system in HDevelop after or while running the original HDevelop version of the program Depending to the problem you can
52. to insert the corresponding display operators explicitly Section 4 6 on page 126 describes these differences in more detail 4 1 Code Generation for C This section describes how to create a HALCON application in C starting from a program developed in HDevelop 4 1 1 Basic Steps 4 1 1 1 Program Export The first step is to export the program using the menu File gt Save As Here select the language C and save it to a file In UNIX you specify the language by giving the file the extension cpp A file will be created that contains the HDevelop program as C source code For every HDevelop procedure ho e Q x lt LLI o Lo e Oo 114 Code Export except the main procedure the exported file contains a C procedure with the corresponding name Iconic input and output parameters of a procedure are declared as Hobject and Hobject respectively while control input and output parameters are declared as HTuple and HTuplex respectively All pro cedures are declared at the beginning of the file The program body of the HDevelop main procedure is contained in a procedure action which is called in the function main action and main can be excluded from compilation by inserting the instruction define NO_EXPORT_MAIN at the appro priate position in the application This can be useful if you want to integrate exported HDevelop code into your application through specific procedure interfaces In that case
53. to open a combo box and to select a value suggestion In addition this combo box contains a list of variables that contain values of the required type A restriction of proposed variables is especially used for parameters that contain data like file frame grabber or OCR handles Input control parameters may contain constants variables and expressions Common types are integer numbers integer floating point numbers real boolean values true and false and character strings string You can also specify multiple values of these types at once by using tuples This is an array of values separated by commas and enclosed in brackets Furthermore you may build up expressions with these values The possibilities of using tuples are very extensive You may use expressions in HDevelop similar to the use of expressions in C or in Pascal You will find a more detailed description in section 3 5 on page 93 Control output parameters These parameters are handled in the same way as output object parameters Their defaults are named as their parameter names Other possibilities to obtain a control output variable name are either using the combo box or specifying variable names manually You cannot use any expressions for these parameters either 80 Graphical User Interface After discussing what can be input for different parameters it is explained how this is done Nevertheless you have to keep in mind that you need to modify a parameter
54. window Increasing the zooming factor by 1 roughly increases the enlargement by a factor of 2 You can select a particular pixel by single clicking on it with the left mouse button The zooming tool stores this position internally and will redisplay the thus selected part of the image object when you leave the graphics window This enables you to have a meaningful display in the zooming tool whenever you want to do actions outside of the graphics window 2 3 6 7 Visualizationp gt Gray Histogram Info This menu item opens a sophisticated tool for the inspection of gray value histograms which can also be used to select thresholds interactively and to set the range of displayed gray values dynamically Figure 2 19 shows the layout of the gray histogram inspection window When opening the tool the histogram of the image shown in the currently active graphics window is displayed When the tool is already open four modes of sending new image data to the tool are avail able 1 The simplest mode is to display an image in the active graphics window Whenever you do so the histogram of this image is computed and drawn and the tool records the graphics window from which the image was sent 2 Another simple method to send new data to the tool is to single click into an image that is displayed in a graphics window 3 Whenever image data is displayed overlaid with region data in a graphics window the graphics window does not need to be active
55. 3 25 FDC 4 Satz 5 4 busan bad Ea 1415 S0 C mehrferbig 1 50 1416 90 C mehrfarbig 2 75 250 1417 1418 S00 E Geiviotan lage eos tap do Hess DAE mamas SR FOC 13 Satz 4 W 12 50 11 a Block 15 Figure 5 1 Part of the page of a Michel catalog Stamps are darker than paper Stamps are connected image areas that do not overlap Stamps have a minimum and maximum size Stamps are rectangular The task would be very simple if the attribute list would directly represent the program Unfortunately 5 2 Capillary Vessel 133 this is not possible due to the ambiguity of spoken language Thus you need language constructs with a precise syntax and a semantics that are as close as possible to the informal description Using the HDevelop syntax an appropriate program would look like this dev_close_window read_image Catalog swiss1 tiff get_image_pointerl Catalog Pointer Type Width Height dev_open_window 0 0 Width 2 Height 2 black WindowID dev_set_part 0 0 Height 1 Width 1 dev_set_draw fill threshold Catalog Dark 0 110 dev_set_colored 6 connection Dark ConnectedRegions fill_up ConnectedRegions RegionFillUp select_shape RegionFillUp StampCandidates area and 10000 200000 select_shape StampCandidates Stamps compactness and 1 1 5 smallest_rectanglel Stamps Row1 Columni Row2 Column2 dev_displa
56. 9 161 Introducing HDevelop 1 lt O 2 O 53 3 O pue Chapter 1 Introducing HDevelop In fact HDevelop is more than a graphical user interface to HALCON It is a highly interactive integrated development environment IDE for the development of machine vision applications There are four basic ways to develop machine vision applications using HDevelop e Rapid prototyping in the interactive environment HDevelop You can use HDevelop to find the optimal operators or parameters to solve your machine vision task and then re build the application using the programming languages C C or COM Visual Basic Visual Basic NET CA Delphi e Development of an application that runs within HDevelop Using HDevelop you can also develop a complete machine vision application and run it within the HDevelop environment e Run HDevelop programs or procedures from a programming language using HDevEngine A way lying in between the two ones described above is to develop the machine vision part of an application in HDevelop and then use HDevEngine to execute it from the main part of the application which is written in a programming language e Export of an application as C C Visual Basic Visual Basic NET or CA source code As an alternative to HDevEngine you can export an application developed in HDevelop as C C Visual Basic Visual Basic NET or C source code This program can then be compiled and linked with t
57. ALCON operators by using keywords which are associated with each operator You get a window divided into two parts which contains all keywords on the left hand side and the selected operators on the right see figure 2 37 After the suggestions for an operator have been generated all keywords belonging to this operator are marked reversed on the left hand side of the window On the right side you will find all operators associated with at least one of these keywords Clicking a keyword on the left list causes the addition of operators belonging to this keyword If you want to transfer one of these operators to the operator dialog area you click one of them with the left mouse button Afterwards the selection window is closed Because there are many entries in the left keyword list you may see all marked keywords only by scrolling it 62 Graphical User Interface Keywords i if Keywords Operators Chord representation crop_domain_rel partition_rectangle partition_dynamic clip_region_rel clip_region clip_contours_xld Figure 2 37 Operator suggestions according to keyword Clipping 2 3 10 Menu Window Windows only On a Windows system this menu offers support to manage the sub windows of the main window i e the program operator variable graphics window s and possibly other dialogs You see the provided menu items in figure 2 38 Note that this menu is not supported in a UNIX environment
58. ET and C export because here one HWindowXCtr1 is used e dev_set_window_extents With this operator you can set the size and position of the active HDevelop graphics window e dev_set_window 2 3 8 Menu Operators 57 This operator activates the graphics window containing the given ID This ID is an output parameter of dev_open_window After the execution the output is redirected to this window This operator is not needed for exported code in C or C because here every window operation uses the ID as a parameter The operator has no effect for exported code in Visual Basic Visual Basic NET and CH dev_set_color dev_set_colored dev_set_color has the same effects as the menu item Visualization gt Color see sec tion 2 3 6 13 on page 43 dev_set_colored is equal to the menu item Visualization gt Colored see section 2 3 6 13 on page 43 dev_set_draw This operator has the same effects as the menu item Visualization gt Draw see section 2 3 6 14 on page 43 dev_set_line_width For an explanation see the menu item Visualization gt Line Width see section 2 3 6 15 on page 43 dev_set_lut For an explanation see the menu item Visualization gt Lut see section 2 3 6 17 on page 43 dev_set_paint For an explanation see the menu item Visualization gt Paint see section 2 3 6 18 on page 44 If you want to specify all possible parameters of a given paint mode you have to specify them as a tuple analogously t
59. For more details see the Programmer s Guide chapter 6 on page 57 4 1 2 Optimization Optimization might be necessary for variables of class HTuple This kind of optimization can either be done in HDevelop or in the generated C code In most cases optimization is not necessary if you program according to the following rules 4 1 3 Used Classes 115 1 Using the tuple concatenation it is more efficient to extend a tuple at the right side like T T New because this can the transformed to T Append New in C and requires no creation of a new tuple whereas T New T which is translated into T New Append T would need the creation of a new tuple 2 Another good way to modify a tuple is the operator insert see section 3 5 2 on page 95 In this case HDevelop code like T i New can directly be translated into the efficient and similar looking code T i New ho e Q x lt LLI o Lo e Oo 4 1 3 Used Classes There are only two classes that are used HTuple for control parameters and Hobject for iconic data There is no need for other classes as long as the program has the same functionality as in HDevelop When editing a generated program you are free to use any of the classes of HALCON C to extend the functionality 4 1 4 Limitations and Troubleshooting Besides the restrictions mentioned in this section and in section 4 6 on page 126 please also check the descr
60. HALCON the Power of Machine Vision EC M f MVTec Software GmbH Building Vision for Business HDevelop the integrated development environment of HALCON Version 7 1 4 All rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic mechanical photocopying recording or otherwise without prior written permission of the publisher Edition 1 July 1997 Edition 2 November 1997 Edition 3 March 1998 HALCON 5 1 Edition 4 April 1999 HALCON 5 2 Edition 5 October 2000 HALCON 6 0 Edition 6 June 2002 HALCON 6 1 Edition 6a December 2002 HALCON 6 1 1 Edition 7 December 2003 HALCON 7 0 Edition 7a July 2004 HALCON 7 0 1 Edition 8 July 2005 HALCON 7 1 Edition 8a April 2006 HALCON 7 1 1 Edition 8b December 2006 HALCON 7 1 2 Edition 8c August 2007 HALCON 7 1 3 EC Copyright 1997 2008 by MVTec Software GmbH M nchen Germany MVTec Software GmbH Microsoft Windows Windows NT Windows 2000 Windows XP and Visual Basic are either trademarks or registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation All other nationally and internationally recognized trademarks and tradenames are hereby recognized More information about HALCON can be found at http ww halcon com About This Manual This manual is a guide to HDevelop the integrated development environment IDE for HALCON HDevelop facilitates rapid prototyping by offering a hi
61. Once a procedure is created it can basically be used like an operator Calls to the procedure can be added to any program body and be executed with the appropriate calling parameters Generally the concept of using procedures inside HDevelop is an extension to the concept of calling HALCON operators since procedure and operator interfaces have the same parameter categories and the same rules apply for passing calling parameters Since HALCON 7 1 local and external procedures are differentiated Local procedures are stored inside the HDevelop program and correspond to the procedures of the former versions of HALCON External procedures are stored separately and therefore can be shared between different HDevelop programs and what is most advantageous the modification of an external procedure immediatly affects all HDevelop programs using it Additionally the procedures now can be ordered in a hierarchical way i e similar to the storing of operators thematically ordered chapters and sections can be composed Further since HALCON 7 1 1 external procedures can be protected by passwords so that they can be applied but not viewed or modified by unauthorized users 1 4 Example Session To get a first impression how to use HDevelop you may have a look at the following example session Every important step during the image processing session is explained in detail Thus having read this chapter thoroughly you will understand the main HALCON ideas and
62. Operator 7 Procedure A x Operator Procedure select_shape Regions Region y region object SelectedRegions SelectedRegions region object Features area gt string Operation and string Min 1150 Max 99999 Figure 2 52 Operator window with operator select_shape The computed output parameter values are displayed in the variable window Iconic variables are shown in the current graphics window if you haven t suppressed this option compare sec tion 2 3 3 11 on page 21 Afterwards the operator window is cleared If you did not specify all parameters or if you used wrong values an error dialog is raised and execution is canceled In this case the operator window remains open to allow appropriate changes Enter By clicking the button Enter the currently edited operator or procedure call is transferred into the program window without being executed Apply If you click Apply the operator is executed with the specified parameters but not entered into or changed in the program This enables you to determine the optimum parameters rapidly since the operator dialog remains open and hence you can change parameters quickly Note that this functionality is not available for procedure calls and thus the button is grayed out in this case Unlike the button Ox only the single line you edit or enter is executed no matter where the PC 1s located Thus you have to ensure that all the input variables c
63. Selection By Call Parameters Only in AllOut y Syntax HalconDevelop Digits 12 Cancel Figure 2 8 The options window Sort Variables This checkbox determines whether the iconic and control variables displayed in the variable win dow will be sorted by name Update Window This item concerns the output of iconic data in the graphics window after the execution of a HALCON operator With the default settings all iconic data computed in the run mode see sec tion 2 3 5 1 on page 28 is displayed in the current graphics window You may want to suppress this automatic output e g because it slows down the performance If the output is suppressed you have the same behavior as exported C C Visual Basic Visual Basic NET or C code where automatic output of data is not supported Show Processing Time This checkbox indicates whether the required runtime of the last operator or procedure call should be displayed after the execution has stopped Itis a measurement of the needed time for the current operator or procedure call without output and other management tasks of HDevelop Along with the required runtime the name of the operator or procedure is displayed in the status bar at the bottom of the main window Please note that the displayed runtime can vary considerably This is caused by the inaccuracy of the operating system s time measurement procedure Insert Interactions Sometimes it is very helpful to record user inte
64. The arithmetic operations in HDevelop match the usual definitions Expressions can have any number of parentheses The division operator a1 a2 can be applied to integer as well as to real The result is of type real if at least one of the operands is of type real If both operands are of type integer the division is an integer division The remaining arithmetic operators multiplication addition subtraction and Language 100 Language negation can be applied to either integer or real numbers If at least one operand is of type real the result will be a real number as well In the following example V1 is set to 1 V2 to 1 3333333 and V3 to 2 0 Vi 4 3 V2 4 3 0 V3 4 3 2 0 Simple examples can be found in the program arithmetic dev 3 5 6 Bit Operations This section describes the operators for bit processing of numbers The operands have to be integers 1sh i1 i2 left shift rsh i1 i2 right shift il band i2 bitwise and il bxor i2 bitwise xor il bor i2 bitwise or bnot i bitwise complement Table 3 10 Bit operations The result of lsh i1 i2 is a bitwise left shift of i1 that is applied i2 times If there is no overflow this is equivalent to a multiplication by 27 The result of rsh i1 i2 is a bitwise right shift of 11 that is applied i2 times For non negative i1 this is equivalent to a division by 237 For negative i1 the result depends on the used hardware For 1sh and rsh the result is
65. Whe Proen AMERO e ra eS we ee AR 2 4 2 Program Counter Insertion Cursor and Break Points 243 Creating and Editing Procedures o cc ee we eee e EE RR eS 2 CIA VIAN 0 RS He BA ae eS AA eee ae ees 231 Operator Name Field aac 5 gs obo ee eR Ee ee we 20 2 Parameter Display 205 444 4 408 deta bee eee ba bed 223 Contool BUNOS lt a ee Soe RM Ew Oe Oh eS OY 26 Vanable Window 5 0546 Ss ee eR Eee RE OHA e EEE Dl lt P TOr onie DAA e coc a a Dae SR ASS BAG 202 Asador Control Data lt s sc iwi ee ewe a ew EA Pewee e e 2 Graphies Window lt lt ooo OS ee eS Be eR ea A 84 Language 89 3 1 Basie Types Of Parameter 2 ook eee ped nee Eee bh Ok eee eS 89 32 Control Types and Constants lt s so 62454 22454 AS OEE eee SS ES 90 Sa o Goose 6 ed eee A a wee 92 34 Operations on conte DBJEE S o ece s e eG Bee SS RA Se Ge eS 93 3 5 Expressions for Input Control Parameters lt lt occ ke rar emesa as 93 3 5 1 General Features of Tuple Operations 2 25 6 we ee eS 93 Dock GASSISWIMENES oo a poea e e e BS ld Be e aa ae ERa 95 3 5 5 Basic Tuple Operations ooo ccoo cria ewe ee 96 39A LUPI CIAO ii A RS Be EO RR i 97 3 5 3 Simple Anthmenc Operations spres 45 se ee pee eR ee eS 99 So WW Operaueens 2 6 koh a ee eh ER SSE BAS eee eRe eS SS 100 25 7 Sime Operations or E a AAA 100 32539 Comparison Operators lt a A A a a 103 339 Boolean Operas 4 005 6485 pees bo Re Pe ad ARA 103 33 10 Tngonometne Functions 5 4 2 2 5 404
66. a closer look at the image in figure 1 1 you will see the typical temporal offset between two half images that occurs when taking images with a video camera This temporal offset is 20 ms for PAL systems and 16 6 ms for NTSC systems HALCON offers an algorithm that computes an interpolated full image from such a video image The name of the appropriate operator is fi11_interlace see the HALCON Reference Manual The next step is to specify this name in the operator window s operator name field If it is indicated completely HDevelop shows the operator immediately in the operator window Now you have to specify the variable name of your image For this you put in the name Christof in the parameter field ImageCamera To do so you have two possibilities e Direct input via the keyboard e Using the combo box that is associated with the parameter text field you may choose an appropriate name The system s suggestion for the interpolated image is ImageFilled By clicking button OK you insert this operator into the program and execute it immediately The computed image is displayed automati cally in the active graphics window c O 2 O gt d O he Introducing HDevelop HDevelop marks dev File Edit Execute Visualization Procedures Operators Suggestions Window Help ojal ajaja elke he Pah atea es SES Imes poa it FET operator 7 Procedure Bee Active E operator Procedure mean_mage E J gt Image
67. able that contains for example an integer is of type integer This type might change to real or a tuple of integer after specifying new values for this variable But it always remains a control variable Similarly this is the case for iconic variables which may contain regions images or XLDs You may assign new values to an iconic variable as often as you want to but you cannot change its type so that it becomes a control variable In addition to classifying HDevelop variables by whether they are iconic or control variables they can also be distinguished by whether they are interface parameters of the current procedure or local variables Generally both kinds of variables are treated equally except that interface parameters in the variable window are marked by the prefixes lt and gt for input and output parameters respectively New variables are created in the operator dialog area during specification of operator or procedure call parameters Here every sequence of characters without single quotation marks is interpreted as a variable name If this name did not exist before the variable is created in the operator dialog area by pressing Ok or Enter The variable type is specified through the type of the parameter where it was used for the first time Variables that correspond to an iconic object parameter create an iconic variable variables for a control parameter create a control variable Every time an operator or procedure ca
68. age 82 they will be visualized you may modify parameters for the graphics windows as described in section 2 3 6 on page 32 you may even modify the current procedure body Note that all user interaction except Execute gt Stop is disabled during program execution in case the latter was not started in the main procedure HDevelop may be slow to react to your actions while the program is running This is caused by the fact that HALCON reacts to user input only between calls to operators e A variable window update during runtime will only be performed if it has not been suppressed see section 2 3 3 11 on page 21 In any case the values of all variables are shown in the variable window after the execution s termination While the program is running the menu items Execute gt Run Execute gt Step Execute gt Step Into and Execute gt Step Out and the corresponding toolbar buttons are grayed out i e you cannot execute them You have the following possibilities to stop your HDevelop program 1 The program runs until the last operator or procedure call in the current program i e the main procedure body has been called The PC is positioned behind this operator This is the usual way to terminate a program 2 The menu Execute gt Stop or the corresponding toolbar button has been pressed 3 A break point has been set see section 2 4 on page 66 In this case the last operator or procedure call that will be executed is the o
69. ails see section 2 3 7 11 on page 50 In the paths listed there all available external procedures are searched for automatically A list of them is 14 Graphical User Interface displayed in addition to the local procedures of the current program at the bottom of the menu item Procedures Sometimes procedures with the same name exist If there is a local procedure with the name of an external procedure the local procedure is applied If different external procedures with the same name exist in different paths the name is searched for in all paths following the sequence of their listing The procedure found first is applied You can create a procedure with the same name of an already existing procedure only if the existing procedure does not belong to the program e g if its path is not already included or if it is temporarily deleted After creating the procedure the path of the redundant procedure can be set again This way the accidental creation of name ambiguities is prevented Local procedures are saved by using Procedures gt Save Current As and are stored as ex ecutable dev files which can be used by other programs via File gt Insert Procedures External procedures are stored automatically after being modified as non executable dvp files These files cannot be loaded as a program and therefore cannot be inserted by File gt Insert Procedures They are applied by selecting their names in the list at the bottom of the men
70. ample programs for typical image processing tasks e Tips amp Tricks This chapter explains how to start HDevelop and describes keycodes warning and error windows and restrictions Consult your platform s documentation for general information Contents 1 Introducing HDevelop LI Facts about HDevelop sa sa carea daa ew wa Oe eee hw ee h L2 FUSES cua a RS A ee Re a GS eG 1 3 HDevelop Procedures o ceos eo ea RO a he 14 Example Session o s oc p a oeio d aS RO Sh a e 2 Graphical User Interface 2 Interacting wath HDevelop cpe oe poe epa ee Se ee a o 22 Procedures in HDevelop lt o s meor e eA EEA AOS de ee EES o o joe e el eR eet Kh Gi AEA A hh E 2d TIE BOP o Bae Bab ee ee ee a a ee BG ee Roe es Deo Ment BAr o hee S Ba Ge See BA OS AS a eS Ba Zaa MEU Pile ee a ee ek A R k Zoe Menu Edit lt s ons kha Se ks Be a ee Se we oe Zoo MENA CERCOS gt kak ns RA eo Bee a ee aA Zo8 Mem Visualization o ecos Pee eee we BHR RSS eRe ES 237 Memi Procedures ose ea ee RS oe ba ww ew ee wads 209 Mem Operators ca eS SS BA ES BS ee SES CDE es 2 39 Memi SUBRESHONS socorro ee Eee eR ee EE eA EO 2 3 10 Menu Window Windows only o e eee eee eee Zo Menu TRIP co Bea Sop be Ba AS a RAS ERGs BS Bs Ql TOOL BSP soe ta hw he ew a eee ok BS ee a 2 3 13 Window Area Windows 2 ee ww Slt SIAN Bar cg ek ee BG REA Ee EE ee be ee eS a 24 Program Window s es soe ke ar eB eA BOR RR SESE ee Ba RS BS 21
71. an analyze them An important step to solve this problem is the image segmen tation that locates the relevant objects For the statistical evaluation you may have a look at appropriate literature about statistics In our case there are two object classes e large bright particles e small dark particles 5 3 Particles 137 The large bright particles differ clearly from the background because of their gray values The informal description brighter than the background leads directly to the algorithmic solution using a thresholding The only thing to decide is whether you specify the threshold automatically or empirically In our case a fixed threshold is completely sufficient due to the good contrast Hence you get the following simple segmentation operator read_image Particle particle threshold Particle Large 110 255 The variable Large contains all pixels whose gray values are brighter than 110 You can see the result on the right side of figure 5 5 It is more difficult to find the small dark particles A first effort to specify a threshold interactively shows that there is no fixed threshold suitable to extract all particles But if you look closer at the image you will notice that the smaller particles are much brighter than their local environment i e you may specify suitable threshold values that are valid for a small image part each Now it is easy to transform this observation into an algorithm One way
72. ape_trans Bright Die rectangle2 All pixels of the die that got lost by the thresholding can be recovered by using a hull computation Since the die is rectangular and may be slightly turned during the assembly we use the smallest enclosing rectangle as a hull Now you can start the segmentation of wires and bonding balls Since only those parts of wires and balls are of interest that lie within the die area you may restrict the segmentation to this region All dark pixels within the die area belong to wires Unfortunately there are some bright reflections on the wires that are not found by the segmentation You may fill these gaps by using fi11_up_shape In our case the gaps with a certain size 1 up to 100 pixels are filled 142 Program Examples reduce_domain Bond Die DieGray threshold DieGray Wires 0 100 fill_up_shape Wires WiresFilled area 1 100 opening circle WiresFilled Balls 15 5 connection Balls SingleBalls select_shape SingleBalls IntermediateBalls circularity and 0 85 1 0 sort_region IntermediateBalls FinalBalls FirstPoint True column smallest_circle FinalBalls Row Column Radius Since the balls are wider than the wires you may clean this region using a simple opening The radius here 15 5 should correspond to the minimum size of one ball In both images you see an erroneous segmentation that was created by a rectangular dark region This can
73. applies the same initializations that HDevelop performs Most of the variables iconic as well as control are declared locally inside the corresponding subroutines Iconic variables belong to the class HUntypedObjectX and control variables belong to Variant The subroutine RunHalcon has a parameter Window which is of type HWindowX This is the link to the window in the panel to which all output operations are passed Depending on the program additional subroutines and variables are declared 4 2 2 1 Arrays If a single value is inserted into a Variant array a special subroutine is called to ensure that the index is valid If the array is too small it is resized 4 2 2 2 Expressions All parameter expressions inside HDevelop are translated into expressions based on the HALCON tuple operators Therefore an expression might look somewhat complex In many cases these expressions can be changed to simple Visual Basic expressions For example TupleSub becomes a simple subtraction To ensure that the exported program has the same effect in Visual Basic this exchange is not applied automatically because the semantics are not always identical 4 2 3 Limitations and Troubleshooting 119 4 2 2 3 Stop The HDevelop operator stop is translated into a subroutine in Visual Basic that creates a message box This message box causes the program to halt until the button is pressed 4 2 2 4 Exit The HDevelop operator exit is translated into th
74. ation gt Gray Histogram Info in the following we concentrate on points 2 3 6 Menu Visualization 39 specific to the feature histogram An important point regards the source of the regions or XLDs The feature histogram is calculated for the regions or XLDs that were displayed most recently in the graphics window Thus if you display an image there are no regions or XLDs therefore the histogram remains empty As soon as you display regions or XLDs on top of an image the histogram is calculated If you display regions or XLDs without an image you can still calculate feature histograms but only for shape features Please keep in mind that only the most recently displayed regions or XLDs are the source of the histogram not all objects currently displayed in the graphics window The histogram itself is displayed with the horizontal axis corresponding to the feature values and the vertical axis corresponding to the frequency of the values i e to the number of regions or XLDs with a certain feature value In figure 2 20 the histogram of the orientation of the clips is displayed When comparing the histogram to the gray value histogram in figure 2 19 on page 36 you will note a typical difference Because in most cases the overall number of regions or XLDs is much smaller than the overall number of pixels feature histograms often consist of individual lines most of them having the height 1 when displaying absolute frequen
75. avior the HDevelop operators dev_error_var and dev_set_check can be used to control the exception handling in the application This works similarly in HDevelop and C One difference is caused by the dynamic evaluation of dev_error_var in HDevelop This means that each time the operator is executed e g in a loop the use of the error variable might change In contrast to this in C special code is added to store the return values of operators This code will therefore be static and cannot change during program execution To understand how the code generation works let us have a look at a short example Here at first the HDevelop program dev_set_check give_error dev_error_var error true threshold image region 100 255 dev_error_var error false if error H_MSG_TRUE vwrite_string WindowId error number error exit endif dev_set_check give_error This program will be translated into 4 2 Code Generation for Visual Basic 6 117 HTuple error set_check give_error error threshold image amp region 100 255 if error 2 write_string WindowId HTuple error number HTuple error exit 1 set_check give_error As can be seen the operator dev_error_var is eliminated and replaced by the use of the error variable later on The points mentioned above might cause these two problems e Ifthe second parameter of dev_error_var cannot be derived from the program becaus
76. b4 20208 e E eRe vale Gs 104 3 5 11 Exponential Punctions 46 6 Be See ee ES Re a o 105 22 12 Numerical Functions se seed recess eau eneret eee a 105 23 13 Miscellaneous F nchons 6 4 6 reoeo kk GR ee A 106 3 5 14 Operator Precedence lt oo sec ee ee ee ew a 107 30 Reserved Words so sea ecotec e eR ee HER go 108 3 7 Contralor a ee eS 109 Soe LTOS lt lt tiles See Bei a ke Haid wie ee he amp eee 111 Code Export 113 41 Codeieneration for Ca s oe copac to e ee SE ee eR we eS 113 ALI Base Steps ce oe ee a A we ee ae oO 113 4132 OPAO sh A ee Pe a GS Be 114 AL Used CIASSES o he ea ee a RRA we ee ea eS 115 4 1 4 Limitations and Troubleshooting 115 4 2 Code Generation tor Visual Basie G ss 6 cios css ee eS 117 Aal tee be ed che RR AN 117 22 Program SHUCTIIE cirio be Sa ee a ele es Ges 118 4 2 3 Limitations and Troubleshooting 2 2 5 eh eee ee ee ee 119 4 3 Code Generation for Visual Basic NET o e 120 Lal BUSCAS Ss As Be ae ir Rene A Gi 120 Az PIOCTADESMIICIM ios aa a a Bs 120 433 Limitations and Troubleshooting gt o o so e erromero ee ee ee 122 4A Code Generation for GCH s ob os eoe eS RO Se el ee do 123 44 1 Basie SpS cocoa ee ne PA be ERD re ew ee 123 HAZ Program SISMO cet eG RR A Be Se RA 123 4 4 3 Limitations and Troubleshooting o 124 45 Code o HT so ce ew ht ewe PEAS BASSES Se OR ERAS 125 SOM II HS Se Ee eee
77. be suppressed by a shape segmen tation Since in practice a bonding detection would be performed only close to the anticipated positions of bonding balls Figure 5 10 shows the results of the whole segmentation Figure 5 10 Detected bonding positions Balls are shown in white color Every radius of a ball you can find in the tuple variable Radius The number of balls within the example you can get with the absolute value of Radius NumBalls Radius Diameter 2 Radius MeanDiameter sum Diameter NumBalls MinDiameter min Diameter Diameter MeanDiameter and MinDiameter are some examples for calculations possible with HDevelop 5 6 Calibration Plate 143 5 6 Calibration Plate File name calib dev This example works with the image of a calibration plate It is used to specify the internal parameters of a CCD camera Therefore you have to extract the circles on the plate see left side of figure 5 11 Figure 5 11 Calibration plate and gray_inside result This example describes an interesting operator It is called gray_inside and is a so called fuzzy op erator In this case fuzzy means that the value of each pixel is not interpreted as gray value but as the affiliation to a certain class The bigger the number max 1 the stronger the affiliation By applying gray_inside to an image every pixel value is interpreted as the potential energy you have to afford to get from the pixel position to the image
78. bj that will bring HDevelop out of balance Not the whole functionality of HDevelop can be transferred to a C program because the graphics windows of HDevelop are more comfortable than the simple HALCON windows However the points described above are very special and will not bother the normal user because the appropriate functions can be found in both working environments If you use dev_set_color in HDe velop for example you would use set_color as its counterpart in HALCON C Further restrictions can be found in section 4 1 4 on page 115 158 Tips amp Tricks Glossary 159 Glossary Appendix A Glossary Boolean is the type name for the truth values true and false as well as for the related boolean expres sions Body A body is part of a conditional instruction if or a loop while or for and consists of a sequence of operator calls If you consider the for loop for instance all operator calls that are located between for and endfor form the body Button A button is part of a graphical user interface With the mouse the user can press a button to cause an action to be performed Control data Control data can be either numbers finteger and freal character strings string and truth values boolean This data can be used as atomic values i e single values or as Ttuples i e arrays of values Empty region An empty region contains no points at all i e its area is zero Graphics windo
79. ble as program code in the directory HALCONROOT examples hdevelop Manuals HDevelop To experiment with these examples we recommend to create a private copy in your working directory More detailed information on HALCON operators is available in the reference manuals 5 1 Stamp Segmentation File name stamps dev The first example performs a document analysis task Figure 5 1 shows a part of a stamp catalog page It contains two types of information about stamps a graphical presentation and a textual description of the stamp In this example you have to transform the textual information into a representation that can be processed by a computer with little effort You might use an OCR program for this task but you will soon recognize that most of the available products create many errors due to the graphical presentation of the stamps Thus another task has to be preprocessed the elimination of all stamps i e changing stamps to the gray value of the paper After this preprocessing it is possible to process the remaining text using an OCR program When creating an application to solve this kind of problem it is helpful to describe characteristic at tributes of the objects to be searched here stamps This task can be solved by a novice with some experience too In this case a characterization might look as follows 132 Program Examples 50 C mehrtarbia 1 50 75 1421 1422 90C mehrtarbig 3 60
80. bo box Feature for the parameter Features 2 3 6 9 Visualization gt Region Info This menu item opens a tool for the convenient inspection of shape and gray value features of individual regions It can for instance be used to determine thresholds for operators that select regions based on these features e g select_shape or select_gray Figure 2 21 shows the layout of the region feature inspection window The strategy to determine the data from which to compute the features is very similar to that of the gray histogram inspection window see section 2 3 6 7 on page 35 You can display an image or region by double clicking on it in the variable window or you can select a region or an image which is already displayed by single clicking it If you display or click into an image the gray value features of the entire image will be calculated If you click into a region that is not underlaid with an image only the shape features of this region will be displayed If you click into a region that is underlaid with an image or into a region that has gray value information e g from reduce_domain or add_channels both the shape 40 Graphical User Interface w Region Features _ oO x Shape Features Gray Value Features area 18810 center r c 301 14 205 79 intensity 88 1483 width 108 deviation 5 03764 height 253 Dost O E minimum 43 sa sa se maximum sa sa shape fetinse ra 148 464 rb 59 1289 ang
81. border The dark pixels present valleys and the bright pixels mountains Thus a dark region in the middle of an image is equivalent to a hole in a mountain that needs a lot of energy to be left This is also true for the dark circles on the bright background in the image of the calibration board Before calling gray_inside you should use a smoothing filter to suppress small valleys This reduces runtime considerably If you look at the operator result on the right side of figure 5 11 you will notice the circles as significant bright points Now a simple thresholding is sufficient to extract them read_image Caltab caltab gauss_image Caltab ImageGauss 9 gray_inside ImageGauss ImageDist threshold ImageDist Bright 110 255 connection Bright Circles elliptic_axis Circles Ra Rb Phi After calculating the ellipse parameters of each circle elliptic_axis you may compute the camera parameters In HALCON the range of 0 to 1 is mapped to values of a byte image 0 to 255 144 Program Examples 5 7 Devices File name ic dev This example discusses the combination of different segmentation methods It works with an image of multiple electronic components These differ in shape size and arrangement The left side of figure 5 12 shows the input image Figure 5 12 Board with electronic devices left and the corresponding color value image in the HSV space right First you extract resistors and ca
82. break 110 Break point 67 break Break 53 109 111 break point HDevelop 29 31 32 Button 159 C 1 125 compile and link UNIX 126 compile and link Windows 126 export of HDevelop programs 1 19 23 125 C 1 19 23 compile and link UNIX 114 compile and link Windows 114 export of HDevelop programs 1 113 C 1 19 23 export of HDevelop programs 1 123 channel 34 clear_obj 157 cleared 33 clip_region ClipRegion 153 close_window CloseWindow 128 Code generation 113 color 145 color image 43 RGB 34 35 COM 1 117 120 123 comment Comment 31 53 55 compactness Compactness 8 41 concat_obj Concat0bj 84 97 150 connect_and_holes ConnectAndHoles 41 connected components 140 145 connection Connection 7 43 133 139 140 contlength Contlength 41 Control structures ifelse 109 Control data 82 159 Control parameter 89 Control structures 109 break 110 exit 111 for 109 if 109 stop 111 while 109 control structures HDevelop 53 assignment 53 comment 55 conditional execution 53 loop execution 53 convexity Convexity 41 cooc_feature_image CoocFeatureImage 42 cooc_feature_matrix CoocFeatureMatrix 42 count_obj Count0bj 43 97 140 150 Data structures 89 90 93 data types boolean 79 floating point numbers real 79 integers 79 strings 79 tuples 54 79 Delphi Borland 1 dev_clear_obj DevClear0bj 57 162 Index dev_c
83. can be selected are shown in figure 2 15 4 HDevelop File Edit Execute Dj sle ee Pro i Reset Parameters G E Clear Window Close Window op BEET Pizel Info co RE Online Zooming Gray Histogram Info Feature Histogram Info Region Info Size Window Zooming Colored convex outer_circle inner_circle Set Parameters rectangle Save Window rectangle2 ellipse icon Select shape for region display Figure 2 15 The menu Visualization 2 3 6 1 Visualization gt Open Window By using this menu item you open an additional graphics window For this a dialog window pops up see figure 2 16 Here you may specify some graphics windows attributes The position size and background color of the new graphics window can be specified For example it is more convenient to have a white background while building graphics for slides or reports Normally upon starting HDevelop automatically opens one graphics window 2 3 6 Menu Visualization 33 Row o Column o Width Height Background black Cancel Figure 2 16 Dialog window of menu item Visualization gt Open Window see the HALCON operator dump_window If the window height and width are set to 1 the window has the same size as the largest image in the current session A position value of 1 specifies that the window position is determined by the window manager UNIX If you have not al
84. can be swapped Activating the button 0k on bottom of the dialog either creates a new procedure or commits the changes made in the procedure interface depending on whether the interface dialog was invoked in order to cre ate a new procedure or to modify the interface of an existing procedure In the latter case not only the interface itself might be changed but also the procedure s program body and variable lists as new vari ables might have been added or existing variables might have been removed or renamed Additionally all calls to the procedure in the current program are checked for consistency and updated if necessary Note that if new parameters are added to an existing procedure interface the corresponding procedure calls are modified by adding new variables as input parameters which most likely will not be initialized at the time of the procedure call If you change the interface of an external procedure be aware of the Operator Procedure E fe o xl Procedure Interface init_window v Procedure name init_window J Local Enter Edit Password Short description opens an image in a window of appropriate size Chapter Basics External Directory H worktest_dev_stests_ext_procsib_ext_procs Iconic Input Image x l gt Iconic Output S gt Control Input D Control Output Pointer Type Width Height WindowHandle lo le ler Jo Figure 2 43 Procedure interface of an existing procedure 2 4 3 Creating and Editing
85. cause a redisplay They are used to prepare the parameters for the next display action 4 HDevelop File Edit Execute Visualization Procedure oem 8 2 21 F Suggestions Window Help bala la lla gt dev_close_window pS gt dev cea window Filter gt dew _set_window_extents m Op Es Graphics gt dev_set window jd Graphics Window Image gt dew _set_colored Ge Lines dew _set_draw Matching gt dev_set_line_width Morphology gt dev_set_color OCR dev_set_lut Object gt dev set paint Regions gt dev _set_shape Segmentation dev set part System dew display Tools gt dew_clear_obj Tuple gt dew inspect_ctrl XLD gt dew_close_inspect_ctrl dev_map_par EN dev_unmap_par dev_map_var dev_unmap_var dev_map_prog dev_unmap_prog dev_update_window dev_update_var dev_update_time dev_update_pc dev_error_var dev_set_check Internal HDevelop Operator Figure 2 35 Menu hierarchy of all HALCON operators 2 3 8 3 Operators gt Classification File In the following items you can find all HALCON operators arranged in chapters and subchapters This set of machine vision operators forms the most important part of HALCON the HALCON library HALCON operators implement the different machine vision tasks such as preprocessing filtering or measurement see figure 2 35 60 Graphical User Interface Yo
86. choose a single color presentation you may specify this color by selecting it in the list box see figure 2 24 With the parameter shape default is original you may specify the presentation shape for regions Thus you are able to display not only the region s original shape but also its enclosing rectangle or its enclosing circle etc The line width of the presented regions XLDs or lines is specified with help of the menu item border width For regions the draw mode can be specified Either it might be filled item 111 or the borders are displayed item margin only Zoom The menu item specifies which part of an image region XLD or other graphic item is going 46 Graphical User Interface Lut to be displayed see figure 2 25 The upper left four text fields specify the coordinate system left upper defines the pixel which will be displayed at the upper left corner of the window lower right defines the pixel which will be displayed at the lower right side of the window By selecting the upper button Interactive you specify a rectangular part in the graphics window interactively For this you press the left mouse button to indicate the rectangle s upper left corner Hold the button and drag the mouse to the lower right corner s position Release the button and correct the size by grabbing the borders or corners of the rectangle By pressing the right mouse button inside your specified rectangle you display the
87. cies Of course this effect depends on the selected feature For features with floating point values e g the orientation the probability that two regions or XLDs have the same feature value is very small in contrast to features with integer values e g the number of holes If you click on the button Set a dialog that lets you modify the displayed range of feature values appears You can influence the calculation of the histogram with the slider Tolerance The selected value is used to discretize the horizontal axis Instead of determining the frequency of an exact feature value regions with feature values falling within discrete intervals are summed Graphically speaking the horizontal axis is subdivided into bins with a width equal to the value selected with the slider Tolerance Automatic selection As already noted the region feature histogram facilitates the task of finding suitable threshold parameters for the operators select_shape select_gray and select_shape_xld Select the entry selected in the combo box Display choose suitable visualization parameters in the three combo boxes Color Draw and Width and then position the two vertical lines such that the desired regions are highlighted For example in figure 2 20 the three clips pointing upwards and to the right were selected The values displayed next to the vertical lines can then directly be used for the parameters Min and Max the feature name selected in the com
88. cimal digit string A null digit string is treated as a zero conversion characters A conversion character indicates the type of conversion to be applied d o x X The integer argument is printed in signed decimal d or unsigned hexadecimal notation x and X The x conversion uses the numbers and letters 0123456789abcdef and the X conversion uses the numbers and letters 0123456789ABCDEF The precision component of the argument specifies the minimum num ber of digits to appear If the value being converted can be represented in fewer digits than the specified minimum it is expanded with leading zeroes The default precision is 1 The result of converting a zero value with a precision of 0 is no characters unsigned octal o Language 102 Language f The floating point number argument is printed in decimal notation in the style dddrddd where the number of digits after the radix character r is equal to the precision specifica tion If the precision is omitted from the argument six digits are output if the precision is explicitly 0 no radix appears e E The floating point number argument is printed in the style drddde dd where there is one digit before the radix character and the number of digits after it is equal to the precision When the precision is missing six digits are produced if the precision is 0 no radix character appears The E conversion character produces a number with E introducing the exponent in
89. conic Output Image Control Input gt Control Output Pointer Type Width Height WindowHandle D gt Program Oj x Procedures ain Interface a Demonstrate the creation of a procedure in HDevelop Figure 2 44 Creating the local procedure init_image_visualization from a selection of program lines 2 4 3 Creating and Editing Procedures 73 Figure 2 45 shows the next step after activating the button Ok in the procedure interface dialog By now the new procedure has been created and added to the program and a call to the procedure is now displayed in the operator window Note that all GUI functionality except the parameter fields and the buttons Ok Enter and Cancel in the operator dialog is disabled Finally in figure 2 46 the selected program lines in the current procedure have been replaced by a call to the new procedure after pressing Enter in the operator dialog The content of the operator window has been cleared and the HDevelop GUI returned to its default state HDevelop procs_test dev lol xf File Edit Execute Wisualization Procedures Operators Suggestions Window Help D am eaa JE aldo gt Mr a 1 2 Operator Procedure E oj xf 4 Operator Procedure init_image_visualization Image MYTecLogo y object Pointer Pointer v tuple Type Type v tuple Width Width
90. ct SelectedRegions SelectedRegionsDynThresh y region object y Features area compactness y string Operation ancl y tstrino Min 11501 y ean Max 1500 1 4 y ean CIN ete aw concer tein Procedures main X Creste Interface dev_close_window read_image Christof marks get image_pointer1 Christof Pointer Type Width Height dev_open_window 0 O Width Height black WindowID Variable Watch dev_set_draw fill Cono Variables dev_set_part 0 O Height 1 Wicth 1 y fil_interlace Christof ImageFilled odd mean_image ImageFiled Imagemean 29 29 ciyn_threshold ImageFilled ImageMean RegionDynThresh 5 light dev_set_colored 12 Control Variables Pointer 24514600 Type byte Width 768 Height 575 Y indowlD 3600 Figure 1 4 Region selection based on shape features In the next step we want to select the regions which correspond to the circular marks of the indicated per son in shape and size This can be achieved with the operator select_shape in the menu Operators gt Regions gt Features This operator lets you specify a set of conditions which the regions have to ful fill in order to be selected In our case the circular marks can be selected by specifying two conditions First their size is about 15 x 15 225 pixels Secondly they have a circular shape which corresponds to a compactness close to 1 0 see th
91. ct as Execute gt Step if the program line to be executed is not a procedure call 2 3 5 4 Execute gt Step Out Selecting Execute gt Step Out keyboard shortcut F8 steps out of the current procedure call Program execution is continued until the first executable program line after the previous procedure call in the calling procedure is reached The previous calling procedure becomes the current procedure Execute gt Step Out has no effect when called in the main procedure 2 3 5 5 Execute gt Stop You may terminate the execution of a program by selecting Execute gt Stop keyboard shortcut F9 If you do so HDevelop continues processing until the current operator has completed its computations This may take a long time if the operator is taking a lot of time to execute There is no way of interrupt ing a HALCON operator The procedure and procedure call in which program execution was stopped becomes the current procedure and procedure call respectively After interrupting a program you may continue it by selecting Execute gt Run or Execute gt Step You may also edit the program before continuing it e g by parameter modification by exchanging operators with alternatives or by inserting additional operators For protected procedures the procedure is also terminated but does not become the current procedure Thus when continuing the program the protected procedure is not continued but restarted 2 3 5 Menu Execute 31
92. cyan arrows The two upward pointing arrows denote the maximum and minimum gray value of the image The downward pointing arrow denotes the gray value that occurs 2 3 6 Menu Visualization 37 most frequently i e the peak of the histogram These data are displayed in textual form within the Static data area of the display The dynamic parts of the histogram area are the three colored lines which can be manipulated The dashed horizontal yellow line can be dragged vertically The label on this line indicates the frequency of gray values below this line It can be used to interactively measure the frequency of gray values at different parts of the histogram The vertical green and red lines denote the minimum and maximum selected gray value of the histogram respectively The selected range is drawn as a white bar below the horizontal gray value axis The gray values on which the two vertical lines lie are displayed next to the lines in the same color The frequency of the respective gray values is displayed within the Dynamic data area of the display Initially the histogram is displayed at full vertical range i e up to the peak value denoted by the label on the dashed white line The scrollbar to the left allows to scale the histogram vertically The label on the dashed white line will be updated accordingly The selected range of gray values can be used for two major purposes thresholding segmentation and scaling the gray values
93. d results in the graphics window i e internal operators like dev_display However you can redirect these operators to your own implementation Thus you can decide which visualization step is important and where and how it is to take place For detailed information about using HDevEngine please refer to the Programmer s Guide part V on page 117 1 3 HDevelop Procedures 1 3 HDevelop Procedures HDevelop offers a mechanism for the creation and execution of procedures Procedures are meant to increase the readability and modularity of HDevelop programs by encapsulating functionality of multiple operator calls in one or more procedure calls It also makes it easier to reuse program code in other HDevelop programs by storing repeatedly used functionality in separate procedures A HDevelop procedure consists of an interface and a program body Procedure interfaces resemble the interfaces of HALCON operators i e they contain parameter lists for iconic and control input and output parameters A procedure body contains a list of operator and procedure calls Every HDevelop program is made up of one or more procedures It always contains the main procedure which has a special status inside the program because it is always the top most procedure in the calling hierarchy and cannot be deleted from the program HDevelop offers all necessary mechanisms for creating loading deleting copying modifying saving and exporting procedures
94. de the operator window as assign y z x and displayed in the program window by of BS 7 ae es The operator insert implements the assignment of a single value tuple of length 1 at a specified index position of a tuple Thus an array assignment here in C syntax ali v is entered as insert a v i a in the operator window and is displayed as ali v 2 3 8 Menu Operators 55 Program l Ea Procedures main y Create Interface dev_close_window read_image Image monkey get_image_pointer1 Image Pointer Type Width Height dev_open_window 0 0 Width Height black WindowID dev_set_draw fill dev_set_part 0 0 Height 1 WWidth 1 threshold Image Region 128 255 dev_set_color white connection Region ConnectedRegions select_shape ConnectedRegions CompactRegions compactness and 1 5 1 8 Number CompactRegions Eyes for i 1 to Number by 1 SingleSelected CompactRegions i area_center SingleSelected Area Row Column dev_set_color green if Area gt 500 and Area 50000 dev_set_color red Eyes SingleSelected Eyes endif endfor dev_display Image dev_set_color red dev_display Eyes i Figure 2 33 Example for using a for loop in the HDevelop program window Program termination The operators stop and exit are used to terminate the program More precisely stop interrupts an exe cution and exit ter
95. dle these windows in a comfortable way HDevelop supports you with some window management functions see section 2 3 10 on page 62 2 3 14 Status Bar The status bar at the bottom of the program window shows you information that is important while working with HALCON e g context sensitive information about a specific user action or the operator or procedure call runtime if time measurement has not been deactivated via the menu item File gt Options see section 2 3 3 11 on page 21 66 Graphical User Interface Do fa sele gt JJ fia e OS lad These icons are shortcuts for the following menu items File gt New File gt Load File gt Save For a detailed description see section 2 3 3 on page 16 e Blojo These icons are shortcuts for the following menu items Edit gt Cut Edit gt Copy Edit gt Paste Edit gt Undo Edit gt Redo For a detailed description see section 2 3 4 on page 25 These icons are shortcuts for the following menu items Execute gt Run Execute gt Step Execute gt Step Into Execute gt Step Out Execute gt Stop For a detailed description see section 2 3 5 on page 28 These icons are shortcuts for the following menu items Execute gt Activate Execute gt Deactivate Execute gt Reset Program For a detailed description see section 2 3 5 on page 28 This icon is a shortcut for the menu item Visualization bp Set Parameter
96. dure call is displayed next to the required runtime Also the lists of the parameter combo boxes in the operator window are extended so that they include variables whose semantic types do not match the semantic types of the corresponding parameters of the selected operator This option is more suitable for experienced HDevelop users The following elements concern HDevelop procedures Detailed information can be found in sec tion 2 4 3 on page 69 Show Only Used Procedures If this option is selected in the combo box Procedures of the program window only procedures used by the program are listed The list of used local procedures and all external procedures i e also the unused external procedures still remains at the bottom of the menu Procedures Export All External Procedures If this option is activated all external procedures are exported when exporting the program to C C Visual Basic Visual Basic NET C program or as ASCII file see section 2 3 3 6 on page 19 and all external procedures are printed when using File gt Print see section 2 3 3 7 on page 19 Otherwise only the used procedures are exported and printed External procedures that are protected by a password see section 2 4 3 3 on page 74 are neither exported nor printed Please note that internal procedures are always exported completely regardless if they are used in the program or not Show Procedure Calls If this option is selected calls to local proc
97. e Edit Execute Visualization Procedures Operators Suggestions Window Help O 5 ul ea lo o El 3 Program iol xj A e Operator Procedure Variable Watch iol x ico Wl Graphics Window olx Clear Active Pr Op Is 2 3 1 Title Bar Figure 2 1 The main window Windows Your HDevelop main window is identified by the title HDevelop in the window s title bar After loading or saving a file the file name will be displayed in the title bar Additionally it offers three buttons on the right hand side to iconify and to maximize the window and to exit the HDevelop session 2 3 2 Menu Bar In the menu bar of the main window HDevelop functionality is offered Here you may perform the important actions to solve your image processing tasks 1 e choose HALCON or HDevelop operators or procedures or manipulate the graphical output Every menu item opens a pull down menu henceforth abbreviated as menu with optional submenus You open a menu by clicking a menu item inside the appropriate text or via the keyboard by pressing the key lt A1t gt in combination with the underlined letter of the menu item All menu items are going to be explained in the following 16 Graphical User Interface 2 3 3 Menu File In the menu File you will find all functions to load an image and existing programs and to save recently created or modified programs respectively Furthermore you may export HDe
98. e Visual Basic routine End Because this routine has no parameter the parameters of exit are suppressed 4 2 2 5 Used Classes There are only six classes types that are used Variant for control parameters and HUntypedObjectX for iconic data In addition there is the container class HTupleX which comprises all operators of HAL CON processing tuples in this case the data type Variant Then there are the classes HWindowXCtr1 and its low level content HWindowX HWindowXCtrl is used inside the project for the output window and a variable of class HWindowX directs the output to this window Finally the class HOperatorSetX is used as a container for all HALCON operators There is no need for other classes as long as the program has the same functionality as in HDevelop When editing a generated program you are free to use any of the classes of HALCON COM to extend the functionality 4 2 3 Limitations and Troubleshooting Besides the restrictions mentioned in this section and in section 4 6 on page 126 please also check the description of the HDevelop operators in section 2 3 8 2 on page 55 4 2 3 1 Variable Names In contrast to C C or HDevelop Visual Basic has many reserved words Thus the export adds the prefix ho_ to all iconic and hv_ to all control variables respectively in order to avoid collisions with these reserved words 4 2 3 2 Exception Handling In HDevelop every exception normally causes the program to stop and report an
99. e language Visual Basic NET and save it to file In UNIX you specify the language by giving the file the corresponding extension which is vb The result is a new file with the given name and the extension 13 A vb 4 3 1 2 The Visual Basic NET Template The exported file is intended to be used together with the predefined Visual Basic NET project that can be found in the directory ZHALCONROOT examples vb net HDevelopTemplate This project contains a form with a display window HWindowXCtr1 and a button labeled Run The file generated by HDevelop has to be added to this project This is done by using the menu Project gt Add Existing Item and selecting the file Now the project is ready for execution Run the project and then press the button Run on the form which will call the exported code 4 3 2 Program Structure The file created by HDevelop contains a subroutine with the corresponding name for every HDe velop procedure except the main procedure which is contained in the subroutine action Iconic input and output parameters of a procedure are passed as ByVal HUntypedObjectX and ByRef HUntypedObjectX respectively while control input and output parameters are passed as ByVal Object and ByRef Object respectively The subroutine RunHalcon contains a call to the subrou tine action and has a parameter Window which is of type HWindowX This is the link to the window 4 3 2 Program Structure 121 on the form to
100. e no con stant false or true are used but expressions the value will be interpreted as true that means start to use the variable To avoid confusion use only the constants false or true as values for the second parameter e The usage of a variable starts after the first call of dev_error_var ErrVariable true In C this means that all successive lines i e lines below until the first dev_error_var ErrVariable false will have the assignment to ErrVariable This might lead to a different behavior compared with HDevelop if dev_error_var is called inside a loop because here the operators inside the loop before dev_error_var might also use ErrVariable after the second execution of the loop body Therefore Try not to use dev_error_var inside a loop Use it right at the beginning of the program ho O Q x lt LLI Y Lo O Oo 4 2 Code Generation for Visual Basic 6 This section describes how to create a HALCON application in Visual Basic 6 starting from a program developed in HDevelop HALCON can be used together with Visual Basic 6 based on the COM interface of HALCON A detailed description of this interface can be found in the Programmer s Guide part III on page 69 4 2 1 Basic Steps 4 2 1 1 Export The first step is to export the program using the menu File gt Save As Here select the language Visual Basic 6 0 and save it to file In UNIX you specify the language by giving the file the corresponding ex
101. e operator compactness for more information about this feature 1 4 Example Session 9 Thus after choosing select_shape you specify the parameters as depicted in figure 1 4 1 The input region is ConnectedRegionsDynThresh 2 The output variable name is SelectedRegionsDynThresh lt O 2 O 53 3 O pue 3 The features are specified as the tuple area compactness 4 The value for the operation and remains unchanged as both conditions must be satisfied in order for a region to be selected 5 The region s minimum size should be 150 its minimum compactness 1 0 Min 6 The region s size should not exceed 500 its maximum compactness should be 1 4 Max As you can see in figure 1 4 all circular marks are now extracted correctly however one additional region is selected as well Thus we add a selection of regions based on gray value features using the operator select_gray Here the mean gray value is used to discriminate the objects it must lie between 120 and 255 in order for a region to be selected excent shows the effect Now only the circular marks are selected Finally we want to obtain some numerical information about the matched marks For example we might want to compute three shape features of the marks They are derived from the regions geometric moments The calculation is done by the operator eccentricity The input parameters are all regions of the variable Marks T
102. e protected by a password but made temporarily for the duration of the current 2 3 7 Menu Procedures 51 External Procedure Paths iol xj H tworktest_dev_sttests_ext_procslb_ext_procs H iworktest_dev_sttests_ext_procsta_ext_procs Add New Delete Ok Figure 2 30 Edit external procedure paths Edit External Procedure Passwords m lol Locked Procedures Editable Procedures init_hdevelop init_visualization P init_set_something Password Confirm Set Clear Close Figure 2 31 Edit external procedure passwords HDevelop session editable The latter are marked with a P The left list contains the locked external procedures i e the protected procedures that remain not editable To change the status of an external procedure several buttons and text fields are provided Changes can only be applied to procedures you are authorized to access Thus a password dialog with the text fields Password and Confirm is available to access protected external procedures you are authorized to access or to assign a new password to an external procedure that is not yet protected A new password is confirmed by the Set button and an already existing password is removed by the Clear button If you are authorized to access a procedure you can use the two arrow buttons between the procedure lists to move the procedure from one list into the other and thus change its edit status To leave the dialo
103. e top window in the background Hence it looses its window focus Instead the window that was only hidden by the former top window becomes the top window and gets the window focus 2 3 10 5 Window gt others If you select one of the other entries the specified window will become the top window and gets the window focus 2 3 11 Menu Help Here you may query information about HALCON itself and all HALCON and HDevelop operators 2 3 11 1 Help gt About This menu item delivers information about the current HALCON version see figure 2 40 Furthermore it lists host IDs detected by the license manager see the Installation Guide section 3 1 on page 19 for more information 64 Graphical User Interface Fie Edit Execute Visualization Procedures Operators Suggestions 2 lz E Ma Graphics Window Arrange icons Operator Procedure Next pert Procedure setect gray y 1 Program v 2 Operator Procedure 3 Variable Watch 4 Pixel Information 5 Call Stack 6 Graphics Window SelectedRegions Marks v region object Features mean string Operation anc string Min 120 vw number real Regions SelectedRegionsDynThresh region object Image ImageFilled image object Max 255 y number real Program of x Procedures main Create Interface dev_close_window a gi a read_image Christof
104. e window You can also select a variable from the variable window as follows Click onto the variable with the right mouse button A context menu opens which lists the parameters for which the variable can be used as a value Input parameters are marked by a lt output parameter by a gt If you select a menu item the variable is automatically entered in the corresponding parameter field 2 5 3 Control Buttons Below the parameter edit fields you find four buttons that comprise the following functions see fig ure 2 52 Ok By clicking Ok you execute the operator or procedure call with the specified parameters When doing so the execution mode depends on the position of the program counter PC If the PC is placed above the insertion position the system executes the program from the PC until the insertion position first Then the operator or procedure call that has been edited in the operator window is executed The reason for this is that the parameter values that are used as input values for the currently edited operator or procedure call have to be calculated If the PC is placed at or after the insertion position only the currently edited operator or procedure call is executed The operator or procedure call is entered into the program window before it is executed After the execution the PC is positioned on the next executable program line after the edited operator or procedure call 2 5 3 Control Buttons 81
105. eature e g the area of an XLD or the mean gray value of the pixels within a region The feature histogram can also be used to select suitable thresholds for the operators select_shape and select_shape_x1d interactively Graphics Window iol x Feature Histogram i xl Clear Active a Festure forientation E Channel fi Y Cra Abs M Accept l Display selected y Send back Color bue Draw gi Width fi AS QD Static data Total number of regions XLDs 13 Peak Feature value 1 8683 Region XLD number 1 Range Min feature value 1 86824 Max feature value 2 54365 Dynamic data regions XLDs minimax 0 o selected regions XLDs 3 Figure 2 20 Selecting clips with a certain angle using the region feature histogram Figure 2 20 shows the feature histogram window together with the graphics window Upon opening the tool displays the histogram of the area default feature selection of the regions or XLDs that were displayed most recently in the currently active graphics window You can select various features in the combo box Feature the status bar displays additional information about the select feature e g which operator is used to calculate it Further information about region features can be found in the description of the menu item Visualization gt Region Info Most parts of the tool are built up similarly to the gray value histogram which is described in detail above menu entry Visualiz
106. ect_region_point SmallSingle OneObject Row Column intensity OneObject Particle MeanGray Deviation endwhile First the window is cleared via dev_clear_window After that connection calculates all connected components to allow the selection of single regions This also displays the region components in the HDevelop window Then you may set the drawing color here red to visualize the selected regions The loop is initialized by assigning 1 to the variable Button 1 is the code for the left mouse button Within the loop the mouse state is queried and the chosen region is selected As an example the mean gray value and the standard deviation are computed for each selected region As long as you press only the left mouse button within the window the loop continues You can terminate it by pressing any other mouse button 5 4 Annual Rings File name wood dev Everyone knows the task to determine the age of a tree by counting its annual rings This will now be done automatically using the example program The first step is the segmentation of annual rings This is quite simple as you can see them clearly as bright or dark lines Again the dynamic thresholding dyn_threshold can be used as before during the particle segmentation in section 5 3 on page 136 To achieve a suitable threshold image you apply the mean filter mean_image with size 15 x 15 first 140 Program Examples The segmentation result contains many tiny region
107. ed 4 4 2 1 Arrays If a single value is inserted into an object array a special subroutine is called to ensure that the array is valid If the array is too small or of th wrong type it is recreated in the appropriate way Code Export 124 Code Export 4 4 2 2 Expressions All parameter expressions inside HDevelop are translated into expressions based on the HALCON tuple operators Therefore an expression might look somewhat complex In many cases these expressions can be changed to simple C expressions For example TupleSub becomes a simple subtraction To ensure that the exported program has the same effect in C this exchange is not applied automatically because the semantics are not always identical 4 4 2 3 Used Classes There are only six classes types that are used object for control parameters and HUntypedObjectX for iconic data In addition there is the container class HTupleX which comprises all operators of HALCON processing tuples in this case the data type object Then there are the classes HWindowXCtr1 and its low level content HWindowX HWindowXCtr1 is used inside the project for the output window and a variable of class HWindowX directs the output to this window Finally the class HOperatorSetX is used as a container for all HALCON operators There is no need for other classes as long as the program has the same functionality as in HDevelop When editing a generated program you are free to use any of the clas
108. edit a protected pro cedure all procedures with the same password are made temporarily editable Using Procedures gt Edit External Procedure Passwords instead the same action is restricted to the selected external procedure e Procedures gt Edit External Procedure Passwords provides the only means to reactivate the protection of a protected but temporarily editable external procedure for the current session When working with protected procedures be aware that the password cannot be reconstructed so be very careful not to forget it and not to repeat a typing error when assigning it Further in some situations protected external procedures behave different from common external or local procedures In particular as they can not be viewed and modified by unauthorized users they also can not be copied printed or exported to any programming language Moreover procedure calls of protected external procedures can not be replaced by other procedure calls Additionally if a protected external procedure contains a call to another procedure for which the interface was changed the procedure call is not adapted to the changes but is disabled for the current program At last if a protected external procedure contains any stop instructions they are ignored 2 5 Operator Window This window is mainly used to edit and display an operator or procedure call with all its parameters Here you will obtain information about the number of the parameters
109. edures are marked in the program window with a green bar and calls to external procedures are marked with a dark green bar Replace Selection By Call 24 Graphical User Interface If this option is switched on selected program lines from which a procedure is created are auto matically replaced by a call to the created procedure e Parameters Via this combo box you can choose between different modes for the automatic creation of a proce dure interface The final elements customize the display of the program and of numeric variables e Syntax Using a combo box you may specify the output mode inside the program window Depending on the mode each HALCON or HDevelop operator or procedure call is shown in a specific syntax like HalconDevelop default syntax or C e Digits With this checkbox you can control how many digits of floating point numbers are displayed in the variable window The selected number is the total number of digits displayed Therefore if you have selected four digits the result of the following assignment assign 4 atan 1 PI is displayed as 3 142 Note that the changes do not take effect until the values of the variables are actually updated by running the program i e the variables are not redisplayed automatically Before continuing your HDevelop session you have to close the option window by pressing the button Ok or by cancelling the action If Insert Interactions is activated the changes app
110. en used and most convenient way is the third one Here you open the image se lection box pressing menu item File gt Read Image This menu contains several predefined di rectories one of which is HALCONROOT Ximages Usually this directory will be C Program Files MVTec Halcon images Select this directory by pressing the appropriate menu button Now you can browse to your target directory and choose a file name By clicking the button Open a dialog window appears in which you may specify a new name for the iconic variable which contains the image you are about to load The variable will be used later in the program to access this image To facilitate the specification process HDevelop offers you a default variable name which is de rived from the image s file name Pressing the button Ok transfers the operator into the program window and inserts a first program line similar to the following line into your program read_image Marks C Program Files MVTec Halcon images marks tif This new program line is executed immediately and the loaded image is displayed in the active graphics window Please note the double backslashes which are necessary since a single backslash is used to quote special characters see table 3 2 on page 91 In our example we change the default for the name from Marks to Christof Using this selection box you are able to search images rapidly without knowing their exact file names In contrast to the t
111. ens a control window which you can use to modify output behavior during runtime see figure 2 8 e Update PC The first item see page 66 concerns the display of the current position while running the program The so called PC program counter always indicates the line of the currently executing operator or procedure call or the line before the next operator or procedure call to execute Using the PC in this way is time consuming Therefore you may suppress this option after your test phase or while running a program with a lot of small operators inside a loop e Update Variables This checkbox concerns the execution of a program Every variable iconic and control is updated by default in the variable window see page 82 This is very useful in the test phase primarily to examine the values of control data since iconic data is also displayed in the graphics window If you want to save time while executing a program with many operator calls you may suppress this output Independent of the selected mode the display of all variables will be updated after the program has stopped 22 Graphical User Interface Y Update PC Y Update Variables TF Sort Variables Y Update Window Y Show Processing Time Insert Interactions TF Show Variable Usage TF Show Low Level Errors TF Automatic Program Save TF Experienced Programmer TF Show Only Used Procedures TF Export All External Procedures IV Show Procedure Calls IV Replace
112. ent point Further examples on how to use the for loop can be found in section 5 8 on page 147 and sec tion 5 9 on page 149 break The instruction break enables you to exit for and while loops The program is then continued at the next line after the end of the loop A typical use of the instruction break is to terminate a for loop as soon as a certain condition becomes true e g as in the following example Number Regions AllRegionsValid 1 check whether all regions have an area lt 30 for i 1 to Number by 1 ObjectSelected Regions l i area_center ObjectSelected Area Row Column if Area gt 30 AllRegionsValid 0 break endif endfor 3 8 Limitations 111 In the following example the instruction break is used to terminate an infinite while loop as soon as one clicks into the Graphics Window while 1 grab_image Image FGHandle dev_error_var Error 1 dev_set_check give_error get_mposition WindowHandle R C Button dev_error_var Error 0 dev_set_check give_error if Error H_MSG_TRUE and Button 0 break endif endwhile stop The stop construct stops the program after the operator is executed The program can be contin ued by pressing the Step or Run button exit The exit construct terminates the session of HDevelop return The return construct returns from the current procedure call to the calling procedure return has no effect in case the curren
113. eric HDevelop type tuple A tuple of length 1 is interpreted as an atomic value A tuple may consist of several numerical data items with different types The standard representation of a tuple is a listing of its elements included into brackets see figure 3 1 Tuple constant Value Value string HE integer Cry Value gt Sy NY a boolean ww Figure 3 1 The syntax of tuple constants specifies the empty tuple A tuple with just one element is to be considered as a special case because it can either be specified in the tuple notation or as an atomic value 55 defines the same constant as 55 Examples for tuples are 4711 0 815 Text 16 100 0 100 0 200 0 200 0 FileName Extension 4711 0 815 Hugo 3 3 Variables Names of variables are built up as usual by composing letters digits and the underscore _ The maximum length of a variable name is limited to 256 characters The kind of a variable iconic or control variable depends on its position in the parameter list in which the variable identifier is used for the first time see also section 3 1 on page 89 The kind of the variable is determined during the input 3 4 Operations on Iconic Objects 93 of the operator parameters whenever a new identifier appears a new variable with the same identifier is created Control and iconic variables must have
114. es A detailed description can be found in the reference of the operator cooc_feature_matrix The final display contains the output of the operator moments_gray_plane These are the angles of the normal vector of a plane fit through the gray values of the selected region Set Display Parameters x Minimum Maximum 0 100000 C y x y satx C y log10 x C y log10 log10 x Apply Reset Cancel Figure 2 22 Configuration dialog for single region features Each of the gauges corresponding to a display can be configured to set the minimum and maximum values for each gauge Furthermore the scaling function of the gauge can be determined This can be used to make the relation of the features of different regions more intuitive For example features that depend on the area of the region are more intuitively grasped when the scaling is set to sqrt x The configuration dialog is the same for all gauges and is shown in figure 2 22 It can be brought up by pressing the button next to each gauge 2 3 6 10 Visualization p Size Window There are convenient methods to change the size of the active graphics window dependent on the size of the previously displayed image Using the submenu Original the window is set to the same size as the most recently displayed image that means for each pixel of the image one pixel on the screen is used for displaying Similar to this you can select Original half or Original quarter to
115. et subtraction Then the result is resized appropriately by using another dilation Figure 5 14 shows the operator result on the left side yeso aa 20 62074 sono 92p AMADO 210929909 e a gt nos 29099099 00 0 Y Poco an ano o ao Samm Do Sawer ry ojo oras DO Fann m nan y a 4 4 0 a a Q Q e eaYaohadgia 290000220 a A DIODADDA 070072 JUL WO ro Ucogtts ETETETT Figure 5 14 Searching regions for contacts left and IC contacts right Now you only have to intersect the result of the thresholding with the region of interest dilation_rectangle1 IC ICWidth 5 1 difference ICWidth IC SearchingArea dilation_rectangle1 SearchingArea SearchingAreaWidth 14 1 union1 SearchingAreaWidth SearchingAreaUnion reduce_domain Intensity SearchingAreaUnion SearchGray mean_image SearchGray Mean 15 15 dyn_threshold SearchGray Mean Contacts 5 light connection Contacts ContactsConnect fill_up ContactsConnect ContactsFilled select_shape ContactsFilled ContactsRes area and 10 100 The result of the intersection is still not satisfying Too many small and too many wrong regions have been found So we have to eliminate them by using select_shape Figure 5 14 shows the final result of the segmentation on the right side One matrix is shared by several iconic objects to reduce costs of memory and computation time 5 8 Cell Walls 147
116. ew procedure is displayed see figure 2 45 The variables that were used to determine the procedure interface parameters are now being offered as input parameters for the procedure call Selecting Ok or Enter in the operator dialog replaces the selected program lines in the current procedure with a call to the newly created procedure see figure 2 46 Selecting Cancel dismisses the operator dialog and the current procedure remains unchanged 72 Graphical User Interface Figures 2 44 2 45 and 2 46 show an example of how a new procedure is created from a selection of lines in the program window In the example the options Replace Selection By Call and Parameters Only In All Out are activated see menu item File gt Options see section 2 3 3 11 on page 21 Figure 2 44 shows HDevelop after pressing the button Create in the program window In the procedure interface dialog the name of the new procedure and the optional short description have already been entered and the name of the output object parameter has been changed from MVTecLogo to Image HDevelop procs_test dev A 101 xl File Edit Execute Visualization Procedures Operators Suggestions Window Help oela eje o o Ejejejara elec gt E leat e 4Operator Procedure alo xia Procedure Interface Procedure name irit_image_visualization Local Short description Opens an image in a window of appropriate size Chapter CT cite Iconic Input z I
117. f annual rings The complete program looks as follows dev_close_window read_image WoodPiecel woodring get_image_pointer1 WoodPiece1 Pointer Type Width Height dev_open_window 0 0 Width 2 Height 2 black WindowID mean_image WoodPiecel ImageMean 9 9 dyn_threshold WoodPiecel ImageMean Regions 5 0 dark threshold WoodPiece1 Dark 0 90 dilation_rectanglel Dark DarkDilation 30 7 difference Regions DarkDilation RegionBright connection RegionBright ConnectedRegions select_shape ConnectedRegions SelectedRegions area and 30 10000000 get_mbutton WindowID Row1 Columni Button1 get_mbutton WindowID Row2 Column2 Button2 gen_region_line Line Row1 Columni Row2 Column2 intersection Line SelectedRegions Inters connection Inters ConnectedInters Number ConnectedInters 5 5 Bonding 141 5 5 Bonding File name ball dev This is the first example in the field of quality inspection The task is to detect bonding balls Figure 5 9 shows two typical microscope images of a die Figure 5 9 Exemplary images with bonding balls on a die The die border and the bonding wires appear dark Thus you may apply a thresholding Since the background is also dark we have to extract the die before doing the segmentation The die is rather bright Thus we can select the pixels by their gray values read_image Bond die3 threshold Bond Bright 120 255 sh
118. for 127 159 for For 53 67 109 110 150 frame grabber 58 fwrite_string FwriteString 148 gauss_image GaussImage 61 Gaussian filter 137 gen_empty_obj GenEmpty0bj 84 97 gen_grid_region GenGridRegion 153 gen_lowpass GenLowpass 61 gen_region_line GenRegionLine 140 get_grayval GetGrayval 150 get_image_pointerl GetImagePointer1 129 147 get_mbutton GetMbutton 138 get_mposition GetMposition 58 150 151 get_system 128 gnuplot 148 Graphics window 84 128 159 History 86 graphics window HDevelop 11 activate 57 close 33 56 coordinate system 57 display color 43 45 57 image 44 line width 43 45 57 LUT 43 46 57 pen 45 region 43 45 57 ID 57 inspect by zooming 34 42 45 inspect feature histogram 38 inspect gray value histogram 35 inspect pixels 33 open 32 56 reset 33 size 42 56 gray value features 41 gray_histo GrayHisto 36 gray_inside GrayInside 143 H_MSG_FAIL 58 150 151 H_MSG_TRUE 58 150 151 H_MSG_FAIL 92 116 H_MSG_FALSE 92 116 H_MSG_TRUE 92 116 H_MSG_VOID 92 116 HALCON error handling 58 error codes 58 150 151 memory management 133 HALCONIMAGES 20 HDevelop break point BP 29 31 32 graphics window 11 activate 57 close 33 56 coordinate system 57 display color 43 45 57 display image 44 display line width 43 45 57 display LUT 43 46 57 164 Index display pen 45 display re
119. frame grabber The toggle button Online allows to grab images continuously and to display them in the active graphics window If an error occurs during grabbing it is displayed in the status bar of the dialog At most one of these frame grabber dialogs can be opened at the same time 2 7 Graphics Window This window displays iconic data It has the following properties e The user may open several graphics windows e The active graphics window is shown by the green dot in the Active button 5 You have to keep in mind that a floating point number without significant fractional part is represented as an integer e g 1 0 is represented as 1 2 7 Graphics Window 85 WFGHandled x width 640 Height 484 Name Pxr Pixel gray fe Port 0 Device A Trigger false Online Mi Status Figure 2 54 Variable inspection for frame grabber handles e Pressing the Clear button clears the graphics window content and the history of the window e You close a graphics window using the close button of the window frame Figure 2 55 shows an example for a graphics window Every HDevelop graphics windows has its own visualization parameters Thus modifying the parame ters see section 2 3 6 on page 32 applies to the currently active graphics window only i e the parameter settings of all other open graphics windows remain unchanged Additionally the new parameter settings are used as the default settings in all
120. g press the Close button In detail you can do the following actions 52 Graphical User Interface e Protect an external procedure with a password Select the not yet protected procedure from the list of editable procedures enter the same password at Password and Confirm press the Set button to assign the password to the procedure the procedure then is marked with a P in the dialog press the Close button to close the dialog and save the program As long as HDevelop is not restarted the procedure is still temporarily editable The protection is automatically activated after restarting HDevelop If you want to activate the protection also for the current session you have to save the program and then change the temporarily editable procedure into a locked procedure like described below e Make a protected procedure temporarily editable for the duration of the current HDevelop ses sion Select the protected procedure from the list of locked procedures enter the password at Password press the button with the rightwards pointing arrow the procedure then moves into the list of editable procedures and is marked with a P and press the Close button to close the dialog The procedure can now be edited via the program window like described in section 2 4 3 on page 69 After restarting HDevelop the protection is automatically reactivated e Change a protected but temporarily editable procedu
121. g to an upper and lower percentile of the distribution This percentile can be selected with the slider at the top of the display For a percentile of O the default the minimum and maximum gray values of the region are returned The display also shows the range of gray values in the region i e the difference between the maximum and minimum gray values In the third display the gray value entropy of the selected region is displayed see the operator entropy_gray Again this is a feature derived from the histogram of gray values in the region The feature entropy measures whether the gray values are distributed equally within the region This measure is always smaller than 8 for byte images the only supported image type for this operator Only im ages with equally distributed gray values reach this maximum value The feature anisometry measures 42 Graphical User Interface the symmetry of the distribution see the operator anisometry Perfectly symmetric histograms will have an anisometry of 0 5 The fourth display contains gray value features derived from the coocurrence matrix of the selected region are displayed see the operator cooc_feature_image The combo box 1d can be used to select the number of gray values to be distinguished 2 The combo box dir selects the direction in which the coocurrence matrix is computed The resulting features energy correlation homogeneity and contrast have self explanatory nam
122. ge of a tuple subset t i gt t selecta subset of elements specified indices of a tuple remove t i t remove a subset of elements specified indices from a tuple find t1 t2 i get indices of all occurrences of t2 within t1 uniq t t discard all but one of successive identical elements from a tuple Table 3 7 Basic operations on tuples control data Tuple V1 V2 V3 V4 for i 0 to Tuple 1 by 1 fwrite_string FileHandle Tuple i n endfor Further examples can be found in the program tuple dev Note that these direct operations cannot be used for iconic tuples i e iconic objects cannot be selected from a tuple using and their number cannot be directly determined using For this purpose however HALCON operators are offered that carry out the equivalent tasks In table 3 8 you can see tuple operations that work on control data and which are applied via assign or insert and their counterparts that work on iconic data and which are independent operators In the table the symbol t represents a control tuple and the symbols p and q represent iconic tuples control iconic gen_empty_obj O t1 t2 concat_obj p1 p2 q Itl count_obj p num t i select_obj p q i 1 1 t i1 12 copy_obj p q i1 1 i2 i1 1 Table 3 8 Equivalent tuple operations for control and iconic data Similar to assign and insert inside the program text the operations gen_empty_obj concat_obj
123. gh this operator menu and to find the desired operator Another possibility of requesting information about the current operator is pressing the button Help inside the operator window see page 77 2 3 11 3 Help gt HDevelop Language This menu item starts the HTML browser with a description of the language similar to chapter 3 on page 89 of this manual 2 3 11 4 Help HALCON News WWW This menu item lets you check for the latest news about HALCON on MVTec s WWW server e g whether new extension packages frame grabber interfaces or HALCON versions are available 2 3 12 Tool Bar You use most icons in this tool bar to accelerate accessing important HDevelop features These are features which you are performing many times while working with HDevelop Hence there are buttons to handle your HDevelop programs and to edit them The most important buttons are used to start and to stop a program or parts of a program These icons are explained in figure 2 41 2 3 13 Window Area Windows On Windows systems the window area of the main window contains all necessary windows to show your HDevelop programs to visualize your iconic and control results and to specify any operator s parameters Additionally you may open as many graphics windows as you want to get a detailed view of your iconic results You are free to move the windows according to your needs and preferences inside this area You may iconify and or deiconify them To han
124. ghly interactive programming environment for designing and testing machine vision applications Together with the HALCON library it is a sophis ticated machine vision package suitable for product development research and education HALCON provides operators covering a wide range of applications Factory automation quality control remote sensing aerial image interpretation medical image analysis and surveillance tasks This manual provides all necessary information to understand HDevelop s basic philosophy and to use HDevelop This manual is intended for all new users of HALCON It does not assume that you are an expert in image processing Regardless of your skills it is quite easy to work with HDevelop Nevertheless it is helpful to have an idea about the functionality of graphical user interfaces GUI and about some basic image processing aspects The manual is divided into the following chapters e Introducing HDevelop This chapter explains the basic concepts of HDevelop and contains a first example that illustrates how to work with HDevelop e Graphical User Interface This chapter explains the graphical user interface of HDevelop and how to interact with it e Language This chapter explains syntax and semantics of the language used in HDevelop programs e Code Generation This chapter explains the export of a HDevelop program to C C Visual Basic Visual Basic NET or CH e Program Examples This chapter contains ex
125. gion 43 45 57 ID 57 inspect by zooming 34 42 45 inspect feature histogram 38 inspect gray value histogram 35 inspect pixels 33 open 32 56 reset 33 size 42 56 language control structures 53 55 main window 11 14 62 menu Edit 25 26 27 66 menu Execute 28 28 29 32 66 menu File 4 16 16 17 21 23 25 29 50 57 58 65 66 71 72 menu Help 63 63 65 menu Operators 4 6 8 53 53 55 59 60 menu Procedures 47 47 48 50 69 menu Suggestions 60 61 menu Visualization 8 32 35 38 39 4246 57 59 66 menu Window 62 62 63 menu bar 15 online help 63 operator selection 60 78 procedure selection 78 operator name field 78 operator parameter display 78 operator window 11 65 67 77 control buttons 80 procedures 3 12 47 53 69 call stack 12 13 31 copy 48 create 24 47 71 delete 47 48 export 19 23 128 external 3 13 49 50 external procedure path 13 50 69 hierarchy 3 insert 18 interface 24 47 49 69 78 local 3 13 50 main 3 12 13 111 114 118 120 123 125 128 print 20 50 replace 49 return 111 save 18 19 49 step into 30 step out 30 program export to C 1 19 23 125 export to C 1 113 export to CH 1 123 export to Visual Basic 117 export to Visual Basic NET 120 program counter PC 12 16 21 28 29 32 67 80 program window 11 23 25 28 31 66 iconify 58 62 programs 16 load 16 print 19 20 50 run 21 28 29
126. gt bala ld la d Classification dew_close_window Fie gt dev clear window Pro a Filter gt dev_set_window_extents Op ET Graphics gt dev_set window co lt Graphics Window Image gt dev_set_colored T Lines dev_set_ draw Matching gt dey_set _line_width Morphology dev_set_color OCR gt dev_set_lut Object gt dev_set_paint Regions gt dev_set_shape Segmentation gt dev_set_part System gt dew display Tools gt dew _clear_obj Tuple gt dew_inspect_ctrl XLD gt dev_close_inspect_ctrl dev_map_par dev_unmap_par dev_map_var dey_unmap_var dev_map_prog dey_unmap_prog dev_update_window dev_update_var dev_update_time dev_update_pc dey_error_var dey_set_check Internal HDevelop Operator Figure 2 34 Operators in menu item Operators gt Develop The effects of each operator are described as follows e dev_open_window dev_close_window dev_clear_window The operators dev_open_window and dev_close_window are used to open and to close a graph ics window respectively During opening the parameterization allows you to specify the window s size and position The operator dev_clear_window clears the active window s content and its history This corresponds to the usage of the button Clear in the graphics window Please note that dev_open_window and dev_close_window are not supported for Visual Basic Visual Basic N
127. hardware For color images only the gray look up tables can be used which change each channel separately with the same table 2 3 7 Menu Procedures Visualization Parameters x Pen Paint Lut Zoom MV Update Figure 2 26 Settings of parameter lut 2 3 Menu Procedures The menu Procedures contains all functionality that is needed to create modify copy delete or save HDevelop procedures At the bottom of this menu all available procedures except the main procedure i e the local procedures of the current program as well as all external procedures found in the procedure paths see section 2 3 7 11 on page 50 are appended in an alphabetical order The menu items that can be selected are shown in figure 2 27 2 3 7 1 Procedures gt Create This menu item is used to create a new HDevelop procedure and corresponds to the button Create in the program window Selecting this item opens the procedure interface dialog which if necessary replaces the operator dialog i e only one of the two dialogs can be open at a time The procedure interface dialog and the mechanism of creating procedures are described in section 2 4 3 on page 69 2 3 7 2 Procedures gt Edit Interface This menu item opens the procedure interface dialog and displays the interface of the current procedure Procedures gt Edit Interface has no effect if the current procedure is the main procedure The menu item has the same effect as the butt
128. he HALCON library so that it runs as a stand alone console application Of course you can also extend the generated code or integrate it into existing software Let s start with some facts describing the main characteristics of HDevelop followed by an example session in section 1 4 on page 3 1 1 Facts about HDevelop While developing programs HDevelop actively supports the user in different ways Introducing HDevelop With the graphical user interface of HDevelop operators and iconic objects can be directly se lected analyzed and changed within one environment HDevelop suggests operators for specific tasks In addition a thematically structured operator list helps you to find an appropriate operator quickly An integrated online help contains information about each HALCON operator such as a detailed description of the functionality typical successor and predecessor operators complexity of the operator error handling and examples of application The online help is based on an internet browser such as Netscape Navigator or Microsoft Internet Explorer HDevelop comprises a program interpreter with edit and debug functions It supports standard programming features such as procedures loops or conditions Parameters can be changed even while the program is running HDevelop immediately displays the results of operations You can try different operators and or parameters and immed
129. he computed values Anisometry Bulkiness and StructureFactor are displayed as a list a tuple in HALCON terminology in the variable window Figure 1 5 shows the example session s result 10 Introducing HDevelop WHDevelop marks dev Pal d Rs File Edit Execute Visualization Procedures Operators Suggestions Window Help oale aeaa 632 81 paje gt Ee QEraphics Window Operator Procedure Active E operator Procedure eccentricity E Regions Marks y region s object Anisometry Anisometry y real Bulkiness Bulkiness realy StructureFactor StructureFactor y real Lo tier am oa tein Program dev_close_window read_image Christof marks Jget_mage_pointer1 Christot Pointer Type Width Height dev_open_window 0 0 Width Height black WindowiD dev_set_draw il dev_set_part 0 0 Height 1 Width 1 til_interlace Christof InageFiled odd mean_image ImageFilled ImageMean 29 29 dyn_threshold ImageFilled ImageMean RegionDynThresh 5 light dev_set_colored 12 connection RegionDynThresh ConnectedRegionsDynThresh select_shape ConnectedRegionsDynThresh SelectedRegionsDynThresh area compact select_gray SelectedRegionsDynThresh InageFilled Marks mean and 120 255 dev _display ImageFiled dev_set_draw margin display Marks 575 eccentricity Marks Anisometry Bulkiness S 3600 1 12702204804 1 11467319487 1 18047551603
130. he password or the edit status of the procedure press the Change Edit Status button paths in the dialog Procedures gt Edit External Procedure Paths see section 2 3 7 11 on page 50 When you start HDevelop the next time the procedure is protected i e when trying to edit the procedure e g by selecting it from the combo box Procedures in the program window a separate window appears that asks for the password Entering the correct password the procedure and all procedures having the same password are temporarily not protected and stay not protected as long as you do not close HDevelop or reactivate the protection via Procedures gt Edit External Procedure Passwords Note that you must enter the password in the password window only once to make all procedures having the same password temporarily not protected But you must assign the password to each procedure separately in order to make it a protected procedure To change the status of a protected procedure with the procedure interface dialog you first must make the procedure temporarily not protected by entering the password Then you can use the procedure interface dialog to change the password or remove the password to turn the protected external procedure into a not protected external or even a local procedure To change the password press the Change Edit Status button see figure 2 50 The password window appears and you assign the new password by the same process you used for the old
131. he region see the operator convexity The convexity of a region is always smaller than 1 Only convex regions will reach the optimum convexity of 1 The last but one display shows shape features derived from the ellipse parameters of the selected region which are calculated with the operator eccentricity The anisometry of the region is the ratio of the major and minor axis of the ellipse i e the ratio of ra and rb in the second display if you set shape to ellipse This feature measures how elongated the region is Its value is always larger than 1 with isometric regions having a value of 1 The definition of the more complex features bulkiness and structure factor abbreviated as structure in the display can be obtained from the HALCON Reference Manual The final shape feature display shows the connected components and number of holes of the selected region as computed by the operator connect_and_holes Gray value features The gray value features are grouped into five displays on the right side of the region inspection window Again they correspond roughly to individual HALCON operators The first display shows the mean gray value intensity and the corresponding standard deviation of the selected region These are computed with the operator intensity The second display shows the output of the operator min_max_gray This operator computes the dis tribution histogram of gray values in the image and returns the gray values correspondin
132. hen the square root of the sum is calculated After that the dot product of V1 and V2 is determined by the formula V1 V2 XC Vl V2 3 5 13 Miscellaneous Functions sort sorts the tuple values in ascending order that means that the first value of the resulting tuple is the smallest one But again strings must not be mixed up with numbers sort_index sorts the tuple values in ascending order but in contrast to sort it returns the index positions 0 of the sorted values 3 5 14 Operator Precedence 107 sort t sort_index t inverse t is_number v number v environment s ord a chr a ords s chrt i rand a sorting in increasing order return index instead of values reverse the order of the values test if value is a number convert string to a number value of an environment variable ASCII number of a character convert an ASCII number to a character ASCII number of a tuple of strings convert a tuple of integers into a string create random numbers Table 3 18 Miscellaneous functions The function inverse reverses the order of the tuple values Both sort and inverse are the identity operation if the input is empty if the tuple is of length 1 or if the tuple contains only one value in all positions e g 1 1 1 is_number returns true for variables of the type integer or real and for variables of the type string that represent a number The function number conve
133. hreshold DynThreshold 6 7 61 137 139 eccentricity Eccentricity 9 41 Edit menu HDevelop 25 Copy 26 66 Cut 26 66 Delete 26 Find Again 27 Find Operator 27 Paste 26 66 Replace Variables 27 Edit External Procedure Passwords 50 elliptic_axis EllipticAxis 41 143 empty_object EmptyObject 150 entropy_gray EntropyGray 41 environment variables HALCONIMAGES 20 error handling HALCON 58 error codes 58 H_MSG_FAIL 58 150 151 H_MSG_TRUE 58 150 151 Error message 156 Example 89 Exception handling 115 119 122 124 Execute Reset program 93 Execute menu HDevelop 28 Activate 31 66 Call Stack 31 Clear All Break Points 31 Clear Break Point 31 Deactivate 31 66 Reset Program 32 66 Run 28 66 Set Break Point 31 Step 29 66 Step Into 30 66 Step Out 30 66 Stop 30 66 Index 163 Execution time 22 exit 111 exit Exit 53 55 111 false 91 159 features histogram 38 region features 39 region gray value features 41 region shape features 40 File menu HDevelop 16 Cleanup 21 history 18 25 Insert 16 Insert Procedures 18 Modules 24 New 16 17 66 Open 16 19 20 Options 16 21 57 58 65 71 72 Print 19 Print Selection 20 Quit 24 29 Read Image 4 20 Save 18 66 Save As 18 19 23 50 file_exists FileExists 58 fill_interlace FillInterlace 5 fill_up_shape FillUpShape 141 fnew_line FnewLine 148 for 109
134. hrough the corresponding GUI control elements as well as programmatically when program execution is stopped in a procedure which then automatically becomes the current procedure Depending on whether the current procedure has no one or multiple calls on the stack certain features of the HDevelop GUI may be enabled or disabled In case the current procedure is not called i e has no procedure call on the stack execution inside the procedure is not allowed and its variables are always uninitialized If the current procedure has multiple calls on the stack it cannot be edited in order to avoid inconsistent states of the call stack Keep in mind that a procedure call is defined by its PC and variable instances which most likely will differ if the current procedure has multiple calls on the stack Relating to the HDevelop GUI the static parts of the current procedure which are the program body insert cursor and variable lists are displayed independently of the state of the procedure whereas the displayed PC and variable values depend on the current procedure call The introduction of external procedures in HALCON 7 1 involves some new characteristics concerning the different processing of local and external procedures e For the creation of an external procedure a path where external procedures are stored must be specified You can set this path or a selection of several paths by the menu item Procedures gt Edit External Procedure Paths for det
135. iately see the effect on the screen Moreover you can preview the results of an operator without changing the program Several graphical tools allow to examine iconic and control data online For example you can extract shape and gray value features by simply clicking onto the objects in the graphics window or inspect the histogram of an image interactively and apply real time segmentation to select parameters Variables with an automatic garbage collection are used to manage iconic objects or control values 1 2 HDevEngine As the name suggests HDevEngine is the engine of HDevelop which is provided in form of a separate C or COM library With it you can execute complete HDevelop programs or individual procedures from a C application or an application that can integrate COM objects e g Visual Basic Visual Basic NET or CA Thus you can use HDevelop not only for prototyping but also to completely develop and run the machine vision part of your application Because HDevEngine acts as an interpreter you can modify the HDevelop program or procedure with out needing to compile and link the application as would be necessary if you export the program or procedure and integrate the code Note that HDevEngine does not provide the complete functionality of HDevelop only those operators that are necessary to execute programs and procedures In particular it does not implement the display of variables an
136. in this loop a region is selected select_obj according to the loop variable i in order to evaluate its attributes If its area is within certain bounds the region is added to variable Eyes concat_obj You have to specify the variable Eyes properly as it is also used as input for concat_obj This can be done by using empty_object that assigns no iconic object in a defined way to the variable i e count_obj returns zero for it During the run time of the program you can see how the individual regions are selected and examined To speed up the processing you can use the menu File gt Options to suppress the automatic output 5 10 Exception Handling File name exception dev In some applications it is necessary to have explicit control over the result state of an operator By default HDevelop stops if an operator returns a different state than H_MSG_TRUE and gives an error message To have explicit control over the result state two HDevelop operators are available dev_error_var and dev_set_check The following example shows how to use these operators The task is to get online information about the position of the mouse inside a graphics window and to display the gray value at this position This can be achieved using the two operators get_mposition and get_grayval The problem with get_mposition in HDevelop is that it returns H_MSG_FATL if the mouse is outside of the window to indicate that the mouse coordinates are invalid This would lead to
137. input with Step or Run The insertion cursor is positioned after the construct head to ensure the input of the construct s body occurs in the correct place This body is indented to make the nesting level of the control constructs visible and thus to help you in understanding the program structure see figure 2 33 To get an idea how to use loops you may look at the example session in section 1 4 on page 3 and at the programs in section 5 3 on page 136 section 5 8 on page 147 and section 5 9 on page 149 The semantics for loops and conditions are shown in section 3 7 on page 109 Assignment The operator assign serves as an assignment operator for control variables numbers and strings Anal ogously to normal operators the input is made in the operator window by specifying both parameters Input and Result i e right and left side of the assignment An instruction in C e g 54 Graphical User Interface a HDevelop File Edit Execute Visualization Procedures Suggestions Window Help oele ejej ole ne E me Classification gt i pro Ac Fe r pss Bails as e Op a Graphics gt while co Graphics Window Image gt break Lines gt stop ii Matching ext Morphology gt retum OCR comment Object Regions Segmentation gt System Tools Tuple XLD 4 Figure 2 32 Menu item Operators gt Control xX y 2Z 1s declared insi
138. ins with a sign or lt space gt If the first character of a signed conversion is not a sign a space character is prefixed to the result This means that if the space flag and flag both appear the space flag is ignored The value is to be converted to an alternate form For d and s conversions this flag has no effect For o conversion see below it increases the precision to force the first digit of the result to be a zero For x or X conversion see below a non zero result has Ox or OX prefixed to it For e E f g and G conversions the result always contains a radix character even if no digits follow the radix character For g and G conversions trailing zeros are not removed from the result contrary to usual behavior field width An optional string of decimal digits to specify a minimum field width For an output field if the converted value has fewer characters than the field width it is padded on the left or right 1f the left adjustment flag has been given to the field width precision The precision specifies the minimum number of digits to appear for the d o x or X con versions the field is padded with leading zeros the number of digits to appear after the radix character for the e and f conversions the maximum number of significant digits for the g con version or the maximum number of characters to be printed from a string in s conversion The precision takes the form of a period followed by a de
139. ions during the execution of a program First the stop button has to be mentioned which is responsible for interrupting the execution of a program When the stop button is pressed the execution is stopped at the active HALCON operator Other features of the HDevelop interpreter are the possibility to display iconic variables by simply double clicking on them and the facility to set the parameters which control the display to the appropriate values In addition to this it is possible to insert commands into the program text no matter whether this makes any sense or not Please note that interactions during the execution of HALCON application can only be used in a sensible way if the single operators have short runtimes because HDevelop can only react within the gaps that is between the calls to the HALCON library Please note that neither the PC nor the BP can be set during the execution of the HALCON application 6 3 Online Help Online documentation is available in PDF and partly in HTML format To display the HTML files containing information on HALCON operators you need a browser It is not provided in the HALCON distribution but nevertheless used by HDevelop Such a tool is likely to be installed on your computer Otherwise you may obtain it for free e g via the Internet In HDevelop you may call the reference manual via the menu Help gt HALCON Operators It will start a browser with the corresponding help files see section
140. ions is changed to ConnectedRegionsDynThresh After the operator s execution all resulting regions are stored in this output variable This shows a great advantage of HALCON s tuple philosophy although you have several different results you do not have to worry how to handle them This is done transparently by HALCON HALCON operators recognize a tuple type variable and process it accordingly This results c O 2 O gt d O he Introducing HDevelop in more compact programs because you may combine several similar operator calls in one operator To obtain a better visualization of the results after calling connection you select the menu Visualization gt Colored Here you specify the 12 predefined color presentation Now every com puted region receives one of the 12 colors This presentation mode is very useful to indicate each region with a different color If there are more than 12 regions the system uses the same color for several dif ferent regions With dev_display of the image ImageFilled you refresh the graphics window to see the results of next step much better Select the operator dev_display from the menu Operators gt Develop Y HDevelop marks dev Ja px File Edit Execute Visualization Procedures Operators Suggestions Window Help ojal ajajaj ajaja Pe oaa es Sess poh Rade O ees Bees o Active E operator Procedure Select_shane E a A Regions ConnectedRegionsDynThresh y region s obje
141. iption of the HDevelop operators in section 2 3 8 2 on page 55 4 1 4 1 Exception Handling In HDevelop every exception normally causes the program to stop and report an error message in a dialog window This might not be useful in C In addition there are different default behaviors concerning the result state of operators 116 Code Export Messages In HALCON C only severe errors cause an exception handling which terminates the program and prints an error message This might cause problems with minor errors so called messages in HALCON These messages are handled as return values of the operators and can have the following values which are also available in HDevelop as constants H_MSG_TRUE H_MSG_FALSE H_MSG_FAIL H_MSG_VOID One of these messages is always returned indicating the status of the operator Normally the result is H_MSG_TRUE Some operators return H_MSG_FAIL like read_image or read_region to indicate that they could not open a file or there was no permission to read it In this case the programmer has to check the return value and apply some adequate action If the message H_MSG_FALSE is ignored errors like Halcon Error 4056 Image data management object ID is NULL will happen in successive operators because the predecessor operator did not calculate an appropriate value Errors In the case of hard errors i e no message as described above the program stops with an error message To prevent this beh
142. ize the program type the date when the most recent user update occurred and file attributes The middle text area displays all available HDevelop files to choose from By clicking the left mouse button on a file name you select it Double clicking a file name opens the file immediately and displays 1t in the program window see section 2 4 on page 66 Furthermore you may specify the file name in the text field below The combo box for file type has no effect because only HDevelop programs with the extension dev can be loaded If you want to open your file with a write protection choose the checkbox at the bottom of this dialog window To open your specified file you press the button Open This action deletes an already loaded HDevelop program and all created variables The same actions as with File gt New are performed Now you can see the main procedure body of your new program in the program window The file name is displayed in the title bar of the main window All its uninstantiated variables are shown in the variable window To indicate that they do not have any computed values the system provides the iconic and control variables with a question mark The program counter is placed on top of the program body and you are ready to execute the program The visualization and options will be reset after loading same as File gt New You can cancel this task by pressing the corresponding button By using one of the two buttons Open or Cance
143. ke All Local with Procedures gt Make All External you can make all procedures external The formally local procedures are now stored as external proce dures in the first path of the list of external procedure paths see section 2 3 7 11 For changing the edit status Of an external procedure see section 2 4 3 3 on page 74 2 3 7 11 Procedures gt Edit External Procedure Paths When you select this menu item the dialog depicted in figure 2 30 appears With it you can define one or more paths where external procedures are stored and searched for Please note that by default no path is defined Inside the defined paths also the contained subdirectories are scanned Therefore it is recommended to select directories with a restricted depth in order to speed up the search process A new path is added by Add New and selected paths can be deleted from the list by Delete see figure 2 30 Every modification has to be confirmed by Ok and the dialog is dismissed by Cancel If you change the list of paths the list of all available external procedures is updated 2 3 7 12 Procedures gt Edit External Procedure Passwords This menu item allows you to change the edit states of your external procedures When selecting the menu item the dialog depicted in figure 2 31 appears It consists of two lists of external procedures The right list contains the editable external procedures which comprise procedures that are not protected as well as procedures that ar
144. l the dialog window disappears After you have loaded a program the corresponding file name will be appended at the bottom of the 18 Graphical User Interface menu File in the file history This allows you to switch between recently loaded files quickly The most recently loaded file is always listed first 2 3 3 3 Filep Insert Procedures Via this menu item you can add local procedures from an HDevelop program file to the current program All local procedures except the main procedure are loaded from the selected file see figure 2 3 If the current program already contains a local procedure with the same name the newly added procedure will be renamed by appending a suffix to its name If the current program already contains an external procedure with the same name the newly added local procedure replaces the external procedure 2 3 3 4 File p gt Open Example Program Selecting this menu item opens a dialog that allows you to load HDevelop example programs grouped by different topics and categories see figure 2 4 The dialog is made up of three separate list boxes The left list contains the three available topics Industry Application Area and Method If you select a topic all categories of that topic are listed in the middle part of the window If you select one of the categories all corresponding example programs belonging to the topic and category are displayed in the right subwindow Single clicking on an e
145. le degrees y angle 92 6125 contour length 1535 71 Set sa compactness 9 97741 convexity 0 706771 anisometry 2 51085 bulkiness 1 46616 structure 2 68131 connected holes Figure 2 21 Online region feature inspection and gray value features of that region will be displayed Finally if you have overlaid an image with a region but click into a part of the image that is outside the region only the gray value features of the entire image will be calculated Analogously to the gray histogram inspection window the gray value features of a multi channel image are calculated from the first channel by default You can use the combo box Channel to select the desired channel Shape features The shape features on the left side of the region inspection window are grouped into seven categories which correspond roughly to individual HALCON shape feature operators The top most of the dis plays shows the most basic region features namely the area and center of gravity of the region see area_center in the Reference Manual and the width and height of the smallest axis parallel rectangle of the region The latter is computed from the output of the operator smallest_rectanglel The second display contains information about the orientation angle and size of the region along 2 3 6 Menu Visualization 41 the two principal directions ra and rb of the region With the combo box shape you can se
146. lear_window DevClearWindow 56 139 dev_close_inspect_ctrl DevCloseInspectCtr1 58 dev_close_window DevCloseWindow 56 128 129 dev_display 129 dev_display DevDisplay 2 8 57 86 129 dev_error_var 116 dev_error_var DevErrorVar 58 91 150 151 dev_inspect_ctrl DevInspectCtr1 57 58 dev_map_par DevMapPar 58 dev_map_prog DevMapProg 58 dev_map_var DevMapVar 58 dev_open_window 129 dev_open_window DevOpenWindow 56 57 60 128 129 dev_set_check 116 dev_set_check DevSetCheck 58 91 150 151 dev_set_color DevSetColor 56 57 59 129 156 157 dev_set_colored DevSetColored 57 dev_set_draw DevSetDraw 57 59 dev_set_line_style DevSetLineStyle 128 dev_set_line_width DevSetLineWidth 57 129 dev_set_lut DevSetLut 57 dev_set_paint DevSetPaint 57 dev_set_part 129 dev_set_part DevSetPart 57 85 129 dev_set_shape DevSetShape 57 dev_set_window DevSetWindow 56 dev_set_window_extents DevSetWindowExtents 56 dev_unmap_par DevUnmapPar 58 dev_unmap_prog DevUnmapProg 58 dev_unmap_var DevUnmapVar 58 dev_update_pc DevUpdatePc 58 dev_update_time DevUpdateTime 58 dev_update_var DevUpdateVar 58 dev_update_window DevUpdateWindow 57 58 dilation 145 152 disp_circle DispCircle 85 disp_image DispImage 85 disp_line DispLine 85 disp_region DispRegion 85 document analysis 131 dump_window DumpWindow 33 dyn_t
147. lect by what means the size is computed If you select ellipse the size is computed with the operator elliptic_axis This means that the parameters ra and rb are the major and minor axis of an ellipse that has the same moments as the selected region Note that this ellipse need not enclose the region If you set shape to rectangle the size is computed with the operator smallest_rectangle2 This means that ra and rb are half the width and height of the smallest rectangle with arbitrary orientation that completely contains the selected region The orientation of the region is computed in both cases with the operator orientation_region to get the full range of 360 for the angle You can select whether to display the angle in degrees or radians with the corresponding combo box The next three displays show simpler shape features of the selected region The first of these dis plays shows the contour length of the region i e the euclidean length of its boundary see the oper ator contlength The second one shows the compactness of the region i e the ratio of the contour length of the region and the circumference of a circle with the same area as the region see the operator compactness The compactness of a region is always larger than 1 The compacter the region the closer the value of the compactness is to 1 The third display shows the convexity of the selected region 1 e the ratio of the area of the region and the area of the convex hull of t
148. len strrstr number rsh uniq find H_MSG_FALSE false bor chrt not tan sinh log atan2 fmod rad max2 sort strchr split real deviation cumul sqrt H_MSG_FAIL and bxor ords sum asin cosh log10 pow ldexp min median sort_index strrchr environment int mean remove gen_tuple_const H_MSG_VOID or chr band sin acos tanh ceil fabs round min2 sgn inverse strstr is_number lsh subset select_rank H_MSG_TRUE Table 3 20 Reserved words 3 7 Control Structures 109 3 7 Control Structures HDevelop provides the following constructs to structure programs if The simplest control structure is if The condition contains a boolean expression If the condition is true the body is executed Otherwise the execution is continued at the first expression or operator call that follows the word endif if lt Condition gt endif ifelse Another simple control structure is the condition with alternative If the condition is true all expressions and calls between the head and the word endif are performed If the condition is false the part between else and endif is executed Note that the operator is called ifelse and it is displayed as if in the program text area if lt Condition gt else endif while The while loop has a boolean expression as the conditional part As long as it is true the for body of the loop is performed In order to enter the loo
149. lied inside the dialog will result in automatic operator insertion after pressing Ok HDevelop saves the current selections for the options Show Variable Usage Show Low Level Errors Automatic Program Save Experienced Programmer Show Only Used Procedures Export All External Procedures Syntax and Digits and restores them upon start Under Windows the options are stored in the registry under UNIX the options are stored in the subdirectory hdevelop of the directory referenced by the environment variable HOME 2 3 3 12 File gt Modules The menu item File gt Modules opens a window in which the HALCON modules used by the current program are displayed see figure 2 9 This window allows you to get an estimate of how many mod ules your application would need in a runtime license Please refer to the Installation Guide section 3 4 on page 30 for more information about modules and runtime licenses By default only the modules actually used by the current program are determined However when Check only used procedures is not ticked the used modules are calculated from all available procedures internal and external By clicking Save the modules required by the current program are saved in a file with the extension _modules txt in the currently used directory 2 3 3 13 File gt Quit The menu item File gt Quit terminates HDevelop 2 3 4 Menu Edit 25 Used Modules x
150. ll is executed the results are stored in variables connected to its output parameters This is achieved by first deleting the contents of the variable and then assigning the new value to it The variable window is a kind of watch window used in window oriented debuggers Inside this window you are able to keep track of variable values Corresponding to the two variable types there are two areas in the variable window One for iconic data above and the other for control data below see figure 2 53 All computed variables are displayed showing their iconic or control values if the automatic update has not been switched off see section 2 3 3 11 on page 21 The sorting order of the variable names can be set as described in section 2 3 3 11 on page 21 In case of a tuple result which is too long the tuple presentation is shortened indicated by three dots 2 6 1 Area for Iconic Data Here you can see iconic variables They are represented by icons which contain an image a region or an XLD depending on the current value The icons are created depending on the type of data according the following rules 2 6 1 Area for Iconic Data 83 e Variable Watch Iconic Variables 125 679310345 130 277777778 130 411764706 130 448529412 13 117 120689655 220 5 326 941176471 429 772058824 535 5 641 1 18 6480195564 18 5645276853 18 3522385752 19 3302061918 1 6 37 6960391127 371290553706 36 7044771504 38 6604123836 3
151. lor saturation Thus it might happen that very bright pixels nearly white pixels or very dark pixels nearly black pixels have the same color value as the components But you are only looking for stronger colors For this you select all pixels first whose color is strong i e all pixels with a high saturation The second enhancement concerns the objects shape As the devices are rectangular you can specify the smallest enclosing rectangle of all connected components to enhance the segments On the left side of figure 5 13 the resulting components are marked Figure 5 13 Resistors and capacitors left and ICs right In a second step we will search for all ICs This seems to be easy as they are rather large and dark However some problems emerge due to the bright labels that are printed across some ICs Thus a simple thresholding alone is not sufficient In addition you have to combine the segments belonging to one IC This is done by examining the spatial adjacencies of the segments A dilation is used to enlarge the regions until they overlap each other This dilation must not be so large that different ICs are merged Thus gaps caused by labels have to be smaller than gaps between ICs Now you can separate the enlarged ICs in their connected components Unfortunately they have become too large by the dilation Another thresholding for each connected component will detect the dark pixels of each IC Finally you can specify the enclosi
152. m body just like operator calls HDevelop has a runtime engine that makes it possible to execute procedure calls HDevelop s runtime engine executes procedure calls as follows e When a procedure is called an instance of that procedure or procedure call is created and pushed on the HDevelop internal call stack If the called procedure has input parameters its values are copied from the calling procedure initializing the corresponding variables in the called procedure 2 2 Procedures in HDevelop 13 e Program execution is then continued at the first executable program line in the called procedure body and proceeds until the first return operator in the called procedure body is reached e By executing the return line program execution returns to the calling procedure If the called procedure has output parameters they are copied to the corresponding variables of the calling procedure The mechanism of calling procedures in HDevelop works recursively i e a procedure can call any other procedure including itself The main procedure has a special status inside the HDevelop runtime engine it is called only once and automatically at the start of HDevelop and cannot be called by other procedures including itself This implies that the main procedure is always the top most procedure in the procedure calling hierarchy and that it cannot be returned from The static part of an HDevelop program is defined by its procedures with a procedu
153. make the window half or a quarter as big as the displayed image The submenus Half and Double change the size of the graphics window to half and double its current size respectively independent of the size of the previously displayed image You can combine Double with Original The submenu Aspect changes the aspect ratio of the graphics window so that pixels are displayed as squares on the screen For this operation again the size of the previously displayed image is used 2 3 6 11 Visualization gt Zooming This is a convenient menu for manipulation of the zooming mode The submenu Reset switches zoom ing off i e an image will be displayed so that it fills the graphics window completely The submenus 2 3 6 Menu Visualization 43 66399 Zoom In and Zoom Out apply a zooming in and out to the image or region by a factor of two Fi nally there are two interactive modes to control zooming Draw Rectangle allows the specification of a rectangular part of the window to be zoomed while Draw Center allows the definition of a pixel coordinate that should be at the center of the window e g for a successive Zoom In For more information see the menu Visualization Set Parameters gt Zoom 2 3 6 12 Visualization gt Colored This is an easy way to display multiple regions or XLDs Each region is displayed in a different color where the number of different colors is specified in the submenu You can choose between 3 6
154. meanDiameter 376264463801 A ee en AC FIO AATIArOA Figure 2 53 Variable window for both iconic and control data e For images the icon contains a zoomed version of them filling the icon completely Due to the zooming onto the square shape of the icon the aspect ratio of the small image might be wrong If there is more than one image in the variable only the first image is used for the icon Similarly for multi channel images only the first channel is used The domain of the image is ignored e Regions are displayed by first calculating the smallest surrounding rectangle and then zooming it so that it fills the icon using a border of one pixel In contrast to images the aspect ratio is always correct This can lead to black bars at the borders The color used to draw the region is always white without further modifications except zooming e XLD data is displayed using the coordinate system of the largest image used so far The color used for XLD objects is white on black background Because of the different ways of displaying objects you have to be aware that the coordinates cannot be compared The variable name is positioned below each icon They are displayed in the variable window in the order of creation from left to right If there is not enough space a horizontal scrollbar is created which you can use to scroll the icons Clicking on an icon with the mouse will select this icon This is indicated by the black background for
155. minated if the loop index is less than the termination value Language 110 Language The loop can be terminated immediately with the instruction break see below Please note that the expressions for start and termination value are evaluated only once when en tering the loop A modification of a variable that appears within these expressions has no influence on the termination of the loop The same applies to the modifications of the loop index It also has no influence on the termination The loop value is assigned to the correct value each time the for operator is executed For more details see section 4 6 3 on page 127 on the code generation of for loops If the for loop is left too early e g if you press Stop and set the PC and the loop is entered again the expressions will be evaluated as if the loop were entered for the first time for lt loop value gt lt Start gt to lt End gt by lt Increment gt endfor In the following example the sine from O up to 67 is computed and printed in to the graphical window filename sine dev old_x 0 old_y 0 dev_set_color red dev_set_part 0 0 511 511 for x 1 to 511 by 1 y sin x 511 0 2 3 1416 3 255 disp_line WindowID old_y 256 old_x y 256 x old_x x old_y y endfor In this example the assumption is made that the window is of size 512 x 512 The drawing is always done from the most recently evaluated point to the curr
156. minates HDevelop Having interrupted the execution you may continue the program by pressing Step or Run This is useful e g in demo programs to install defined positions for program interruption Under UNIX you can use exit in combination with a startup file and the option run see section 1 4 on page 3 Thus HDevelop will not only load and run your application automatically but also terminate when reaching exit Comments The operator comment allows to add a line of text to the program This text has no effect on the execution of the program A comment may contain any sequence of characters 2 3 8 2 Operators gt Develop This menu contains several operators that help to adapt the user interface These operators offer the same functionality that you have using mouse interaction otherwise They are used to configure the 56 Graphical User Interface environment from within a program Using these operators the program performs actions similar to the setting of a color in the parameter window opening a window in the menu bar or iconifying the program window with the help of the window manager All operators in this menu start with the prefix dev_ It has been introduced to have a distinction to the underlying basic HALCON operators e g dev_set_color and set_color You can find the complete listing in figure 2 34 u HDevelop File Edit Execute Visualization Procedures uggestions Window Help Dl al a _ Control
157. mn Areas Radius 1 Area endfor Please note that first the variable Areas has to be initialized in order to avoid a runtime error In the example Areas is initialized with the empty tuple Instead of insert the operator assign with tuple concatenation Areas Areas Area could be used because the element is appended at the back of the tuple More examples can be found in the program assign dev 3 5 3 Basic Tuple Operations A basic tuple operation may be selecting one or more values combining tuples concatenation or reading the number of elements see table 3 7 for operarations on tuples containing control data The concatenation accepts one or more variables or constants as input They are all listed between the brackets separated by commas The result again is a tuple t1 t2 is the concatenation of tuple t and tz Example 5 Text 1 5 9 gt 5 Text 5 9 So even the following holds t t t t returns the number of elements of a tuple The indices of elements range from zero to the number of elements minus one i e t 1 Therefore the selection index has to be within this range Please note that the index of objects e g select _obj ranges from 1 to the number of elements 3 5 4 Tuple Creation 97 t1 t2 gt t concatenate tuples ltl i get number of elements of a tuple t i gt v selecta single element from a tuple t i1 i2 gt t select a part specified ran
158. n procedure always being the first element in the list while the other procedures are sorted alphabetically After being selected from the list a procedure as long as it is not protected by a password for protected external procedures see section 2 4 3 3 on page 74 becomes the current procedure and the correspond ing procedure call becomes the current procedure call If the selected procedure has multiple calls on the stack the last of the procedure calls is displayed If the option Show Only Used Procedures is activated in File gt Options see section 2 3 3 11 on page 21 only the procedures used by the program are displayed in the combo box Procedures While the body of the current procedure is visualized in the program window the procedure interface can optionally be viewed or modified in the procedure interface dialog displayed in the operator window The buttons Create and Interface at the top of the program window perform the same action as the menu items Procedures gt Create and Procedures gt Interface respectively Activating one of these buttons invokes the procedure interface dialog 2 4 3 1 Procedure Interface Dialog The procedure interface dialog enables you to view and edit the interface of HDevelop procedures If it is opened in order to create a new procedure see figure 2 44 it contains a text field for the procedure name to be entered If you edit an existing procedure see figure 2 43 the name of the procedure is di
159. n operator or procedure call in the current procedure body Figure 2 11 depicts the corresponding dialog Specify an operator or procedure name in the text field then find the next appearance by clicking the button Find or the previous one by checking the box Find Backwards The figure shows the result of clicking Mark All If you check the box Edit the operator window pops up and lets you edit the found operator or procedure calls 2 3 4 8 Edit gt Find Again The menu item Edit gt Find Again keyboard shortcut lt Ctrl gt G repeats the search specified via the menu item Edit gt Find Operator 2 3 4 9 Edit gt Replace Variables The menu item Edit gt Replace Variables keyboard shortcut lt Ctr1 gt H allows to search and re place variable names in the current procedure body Figure 2 12 depicts the corresponding dialog After specifying the variable name to find and the name to replace it by you can let HDevelop replace all 28 Graphical User Interface Replace Variables x Find Selected Replace ClipRegions Find Replace Replace al Cancel Figure 2 12 Replacing variables instances of the variable by clicking Replace A11 If you click Find the next instance of variable is displayed in the program window you can then replace its name by clicking Replace 2 3 5 Menu Execute In this menu item you find all necessary functions to execute an HDevelop program As mentioned in section 2 2 on
160. n the exported programs this data therefore has to be removed explicitly by calling the corresponding operators close_ like close_ocr or close_ocv Please insert the close_ operators for all handles in use e before a new value is assigned to a handle and e at the end of the program In Visual Basic Visual Basic NET and C the ideal way would be to use the specific COM classes for this kind of data in combination with the member function This exchange must be done by hand because the export is not able to generate appropriate code 4 6 3 for Loops HDevelop and the programming languages have different semantics for loops which may cause confu sion Because the problems are so rare and the generated code would become very difficult to understand otherwise the code generation ignores the different semantics These differences are 1 In the programming languages you can modify the loop variable e g by setting 1t to the end value of the condition to terminate the loop This can t be done in HDevelop because here the current value is stored inside the for operator and is automatically updated when it is executed again 2 In the programming languages you can modify the step range if you use a variable for the increment This is also not possible with HDevelop because the increment is stored inside the for operator when the loop is entered 3 The last difference concerns the value of the loop variable after exiting
161. n time The following assumptions on the image data help to specify a region as a search mask 1 Road markings remain in a certain image part only 2 Road markings have a certain minimum length in y direction 3 Road markings are separated by an edge from their environment The first two assumptions can restrict the search area enormously To make use of this we create a region as a grid whose line distance is determined by the minimum size of the road marking Figure 5 18 shows the corresponding region line grid on the right side While performing an edge filter within the grid all pixels with a high gradient are candidates on the contour of a road marking By enlarging these pixels by the minimum diameter of the markings dilation with rectangle you will get the search window shown in figure 5 19 on the left side Now the road markings can be easily extracted by a thresholding within the search windows The seg mentation result is shown on the right side of figure 5 19 The corresponding HDevelop program looks as follows 5 11 Road Scene 153 First you create a grid by using gen_grid_region clip_region The operator reduce_domain creates an image containing this pattern as definition range This image is passed to the operator sobel_amp You obtain pixels with high gradient values using threshold These pixels are enlarged to the region of interest ROI by a dilation with a rectan gular mask Within this region another thre
162. nd deviation the standard deviation of numbers sqrt calculates the square root of a number cumul returns the different cumulative sums of the corresponding elements of the input tuple and median calculates the median of a tuple For both functions the resulting value will be of type real if at least one of the elements is of type real If all elements are of type integer the resulting value will also be of type integer select_rank returns the element at rank i and works for tuples containing int or real values The index i is of type int deg and rad convert numbers from radians to degrees and from degrees to radians respectively real converts an integer to areal For real as input it returns the input int converts a real to an integer and truncates it round converts a real to an integer and rounds the value For integer it returns the input The function abs always returns the absolut value that is of the same type as the input value The following example filename euclid_distance dev shows the use of some numerical functions Vi 18 8 132 4 33 19 3 V2 233 23 32 786 234 4224 63 33 Diff Vi V2 Distance sqrt sum Diff Diff Dotvalue sum V1 V2 First the Euclidian distance of the two vectors V1 and V2 is computed by using the formula d JE Vl V2 The difference and the multiplication square are successively applied to each element of both vectors Afterwards sum computes the sum of the squares T
163. ne before the break point 4 Menu item File gt Quit has been executed see section 2 3 3 13 on page 24 5 A runtime error occurred An input variable without a value or values outside a valid range might be typical reasons In this case the PC remains in the line of the erroneous operator or procedure call 6 A stop instruction is executed The PC remains on the next executable line after the stop in struction Note that stop instructions are ignored inside protected external procedures see sec tion 2 4 3 3 on page 74 The procedure and procedure call in which program execution was stopped automatically become the current procedure and procedure call 2 3 5 2 Execute gt Step Selecting Execute gt Step keyboard shortcut F6 enables you to execute a program even if it is not complete step by step HDevelop executes the operator or procedure call directly to the right of the program counter PC indicated by a green arrow see section 2 4 on page 66 The mouse pointer changes its shape to a clock This indicates that HDevelop is active and not available for any user input After the operator or procedure call has terminated all computed values are assigned to their respective variables that are named in the output parameter positions Their graphical or textual representation in the variable window is also updated If iconic data has been computed you will see its presentation in 30 Graphical User Interface the curre
164. ne starts with an operator or procedure name which is indented if nec essary to highlight the structure created by the above mentioned control structures After the operator or procedure name the parameters are displayed in parentheses Parameters are separated by commas The program window is used to visualize program lines but not to modify them You cannot change a program body by modifying the text directly Editing the program text in HDevelop is done in the operator window see section 2 5 on page 77 The main reason for this principle is the advantage that it facilitates providing sophisticated help Thus many input errors can be avoided To edit a line of a program you double click it with the left mouse button In case of conditions and loops it is unimportant which lines e g for or endfor are selected In any case the head with its parameters is selected You may edit only one operator or procedure call at a time Besides editing the parameters of a single operator or procedure call single and multiple lines can be deleted cut or pasted in one step using simple mouse functions To use this feature one has to select one or more lines using the mouse e The selection of one line is done by clicking on it Previously activated lines will then become deactivated e To activate more than one line you have to press the lt Ctrl gt key while clicking on the line If the line is already activated it will become deactivated while
165. ng rectangles analogously to the resistors and the capacitors see above threshold Intensity Dark 0 50 dilation_rectangle1 Dark DarkDilate 15 15 connection DarkDilate ICLarge add_channels ICLarge Intensity ICLargeGray threshold ICLargeGray ICsDark 0 50 shape_trans ICsDark IC rectangle2 The right side of figure 5 13 shows the resulting ICs We have to mention two aspects about the program segment above Here the operator add_channels has been used instead of reduce_domain This is necessary as several regions have to be supplied with gray values The situation of previous programs 146 Program Examples was quite different there the number of valid pixels of one image has been restricted From this fol lows the second point here the operator threshold gets several images as input The thresholding is performed in every image Thus you receive as many regions as input images Finally the segmentation of IC contacts has to be done They are bright and small Thus it is easy to extract them using a dynamic thresholding compare section 5 3 on page 136 However several other tin elements on the board remain a problem because they have to be distinguished from the IC contacts This can be done by restricting the search on a region of interest IC contacts may only appear either on the right or the left side of ICs The coarse region of interest is defined by enlarging the IC regions with a following s
166. ngle mouse clicks Clicking at an item for the second time after a short pause will deactivate it e g lines in the program window or variables in the variable window Similarly the activation passes to another item by clicking at it Very important is the possibility to set the program counter PC at the left side of the program window see section 2 4 on page 66 for detailed information By combining a mouse click with special keys you can activate further functions Clicking the left mouse button once while pressing the lt Shift gt key This places the insert cursor in the program window Clicking the left mouse button once while pressing the lt Ctr1 gt key A break point will be set in the program window By performing this action once more the break point will disappear Clicking the left mouse button twice results in an action that will be performed with the activated item In the program window the op erator or procedure call corresponding to the program line together with its parameters is displayed directly in the operator window and can then be modified Iconic and control variables are displayed in the graphics window or in specific dialogs 2 2 Procedures in HDevelop As already mentioned in section 1 3 on page 3 every HDevelop program consists of one or more proce dures it always contains a main procedure Once a procedure local or external is created calls to the procedure can be added to any progra
167. nguage 94 Language Symbol Types i integer a arithmetic that is integer or real 1 boolean s string v all types atomic t all types tuple Table 3 5 Symbolic variables for the operation description Operators are normally described assuming atomic tuples If the tuple contains more than one element most operators work as follows e If one of the tuples is of length one all elements of the other tuples are combined with that single value for the chosen operation e If both tuples have a length greater than one both tuples must have the same length otherwise a runtime error occurs In this case the selected operation is applied to all elements with the same index The length of the resulting tuples is identical to the length of the input tuples e If one of the tuples is of length 0 a runtime error occurs In table 3 6 you can find some examples for arithmetic operations with tuples In this example you should pay special attention to the order in which the string concatenations are performed Input Result 5 5 25 5 5 25 1 2 3 2 2 4 6 1 2 3 2 1 10 12 1 14 2 16 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 4 9 1 2 3 1 2 runtime error Text1 Text2 gt TextiText2 17 23 Text 217 23 Text Text1 99 Text2 Text1 99 Text2 Text 3 1 2 Text 6 2 3 1 2 Text runtime error 3 1 2 Text 25 1 Text 3 1 2 Text
168. ning the symbol as the first character are exported as plain text statements For example the line Call MsgBox Press button to continue vbYes Program stop 1000 in HDevelop will result in Call MsgBox Press button to continue vbYes Program stop 1000 in Visual Basic 6 This feature can be used to integrate Visual Basic Visual Basic NET C C or C code into a HDevelop program 4 6 2 Assignment 127 4 6 2 Assignment In HDevelop each time a new value is assigned to a variable its old contents are removed automati cally independent of the type of the variable In the exported code this is also the case for iconic objects C Hobject Visual Basic 6 HUntypedObjectX and for the class HTuple C the type Variant Visual Basic 6 and the class object Visual Basic NET C as they all have a destructor that re moves the stored data Because C does not provide destructors the generated C code calls the operators clear_obj and destroy_tuple to remove the content of iconic output parameters Hobject and con trol output parameters Htuple before each operator call Memory issues regarding iconic objects in Visual Basic NET and C are described in section 4 3 3 3 and section 4 4 3 3 respectively However problems arise if a tuple variant contains a handle for example for a file a window or for OCR In this case the memory of the handle is automatically removed but not the data to which it points I
169. now modify relevant parameters by explicitly calling the operator set_system in the exported program 4 6 6 Graphics Windows The graphics windows of HDevelop and the basic windows of the HALCON libraries C class HWindow Visual Basic Visual Basic NET C class HWindowXCtr1 C addressed via handles have different functionality e Multiple windows If you use the operator dev_open_window to open multiple graphics windows in HDevelop these calls will be converted into corresponding calls of open_window only for C and C programs In the export of Visual Basic Visual Basic NET and C programs all window operations are sup pressed because the exported code is intended to work together with the corresponding template If you want to use more than one window in Visual Basic Visual Basic NET or CH you have to modify the code and project manually Note that the export of programs containing multiple windows to C or C might be incorrect if the button Activate was used during program execution Note also that HDevelop window operations that do not have a window handle parameter like dev_open_window dev_close_window or dev_set_line_style are suppressed in all HDevelop procedures except the main procedure In order to perform windows operations in HDevelop procedures aimed to be exported to C or C the corresponding HALCON operators like open_window close_window or set_line_style should be used instead in that case ignore the warning i
170. ns a character from s2 As an example the result of split usr image usr proj image consists of the two strings gt usr image usr proj image 3 5 8 Comparison Operators In HDevelop the comparison operators are defined not only on atomic values but also on tuples with an arbitrary number of elements They always return values of type boolean Table 3 12 shows all comparison operators ti lt t2 less than ti gt t2 greater than ti lt t2 less or equal t1 gt t2 greater or equal tl t2 equal t1 t2 not equal Table 3 12 Comparison operators ti t2andt1 t2are defined on all types Two tuples are equal true if they have the same length and all the data items on each index position are equal If the operands have different types integer and real the integer values are first transformed into real numbers Values of type string cannot be mixed up with numbers i e string values are considered to be not equal to values of other types The four comparison operators compute the lexicographic order of tuples On equal index positions the types must be identical however values of type integer real and boolean are adapted automatically The lexicographic order applies to strings and the boolean false is considered to be smaller than the boolean true false lt true In the program compare dev you can find examples for the comparison operators 3 5 9 Boolean Operators The b
171. nt graphics window In the status bar of the program window the runtime of the operator or procedure call is indicated if the time measurement has not been deactivated The PC is then moved to the next operator or procedure call to execute If the operators or procedure calls are specified in a sequential order this is the textual successor In case of control statements e g if endif orfor endfor the PC is set on the end marker e g endif or endfor after the execution of the last operator or procedure call inside the statement s body After endfor and endwhile the PC is always set on the beginning of the loop If a condition as if or while evaluates to FALSE the PC is set behind the end marker Suggestions in the menu Suggestions are determined for the recently executed operator Finally the mouse pointer s shape switches to the arrow shape and HDevelop is available for further transactions Any user input which has been made during execution is handled now 2 3 5 3 Execute gt Step Into Execute gt Step Into keyboard shortcut F7 allows you to step into procedure calls as long as they are not protected by a password Executing Execute gt Step Into with the PC on a procedure call line causes the corresponding procedure and procedure call to become the current procedure and procedure call respectively The PC is set on the first executable program line in the new current procedure Execute gt Step Into has the same effe
172. ny procedure call from the main procedure are deleted from the program If the current procedure is among the deleted procedures the main procedure becomes the current procedure 2 3 7 5 Procedures gt Copy Selecting this menu item opens a dialog with which it is possible to copy existing procedures see fig ure 2 28 The dialog offers a combo box in which you can select the procedure that is to be copied either by typing the procedure name in the text field or by selecting a procedure from the combo box list which contains all procedures in the program In the target text field the name of the target procedure can be entered Activating the Copy button creates a copy of the source procedure and adds it to the current 2 3 7 Menu Procedures program Cancel dismisses the dialog The copy item does not work for procedures that are protected by a password for protected external procedures see section 2 4 3 3 on page 74 Copy Procedure x Source disp_coordinate_system_3d hd Target sisp_coorainate_system_3d_2 Copy Cancel Figure 2 28 Copy procedures 2 3 7 6 Procedures gt Replace Procedure Call The menu item Procedures gt Replace Procedure Call enables you to replace procedure calls with other procedures having the same interface e g in order to adapt programs to a renaming of an external procedure If you select a procedure in the upper combo box a selection of suited replacement candidates is shown
173. o dismiss the current program without saving the changes or cancel the action 2 3 3 2 File Open File gt Insert By clicking on the menu File gt Open keyboard shortcut lt Ctr1 gt 0 you can load an existing HDevelop program Alternatively you can select File gt Insert to insert a file into the current program body at the line in which the insert cursor is located In both cases a dialog window pops up and waits for your 2 3 3 Menu File 17 Look in a HDevelop e e EA eyes fe tuple Bic Bi vessel Balmarks wood Wi misc_op Pa wood_cells MW particle Kroad_signs sine Bistamps string File name dev Files of type HDevelop dev Y Cancel My Network P IZ Open as read only Le Figure 2 3 The dialog window to open an HDevelop file input see figure 2 3 Itis called Open HDevelop Program File Please note that text C C Visual Basic Visual Basic NET and C versions of a file cannot be loaded In the top most text field you may specify a directory which contains your HDevelop programs A combo box at the right hand side helps you browsing your directories To move one directory level up you press the button on the right hand side of this text field The next button creates a new folder to store HDevelop programs By pressing the last button you can activate or deactivate the option to see more details about your HDevelop programs i e the program s
174. o eliminate all objects which are too small blurring For this you would just have to increase the minimum size with the call of select_shape But if you examine the segmentation results again you will notice that some of the resulting pixels were already extracted by the first segmentation Thus you should search the small particles within the complement of the large ones only To avoid the segmentation of small particles in the direct neighbourhood of the large ones those are enlarged before building their complement Thus we get the following modified program 138 Program Examples Figure 5 6 Small objects simple left and advanced segmentation right dilation_circle Large LargeDilation 8 5 complement LargeDilation NotLarge reduce_domain Particle NotLarge ParticleRed mean_image ParticleRed Mean 31 31 dyn_threshold ParticleRed Mean Small 3 light This method shows two advantages First the reliable model of the large particles can be used to extract the small ones This increases the quality of the segmentation Second the processing speed is increased as the second segmentation works only on a part of the image data The right side of figure 5 6 shows the segmentation result Unfortunately the image still contains noise To remove it you may either sort out noisy objects by their area as described above or by an opening operation We prefer the second method as it additionally smooths the
175. o stop and report an error message in a dialog window This might not be useful in Visual Basic NET The standard way to handle this in Visual Basic NET is by using the Try Catch mechanism This allows to access the reason for the exception and to continue accordingly Thus for HDevelop programs containing error handling dev_ set_check give_error the corresponding code is automatically included Every op erator call for which it is assumed that the HALCON error mechanism is turned off is enclosed in a Try block followed by a Catch block The latter handles the exception and assigns the corresponding HALCON error number to the error variable activated by dev_error_var or to a local error variable otherwise Please note that a call of dev_ set_check give_error has no influence on the operator call The exception will always be raised This is also true for messages like H_MSG_FAIL which are not handled as exceptions in C for example When handling exceptions you also have to be aware that the COM interface always resets the output parameters at the beginning of the operator execution Thus when the exception occurs output variables are set to Nothing Therefore you cannot use the values of variables used as output parameters of the operator causing the exception 4 3 3 3 Memory Management The NET Framework s runtime environment CLR Common Language Runtime has a mechanism called garbage collector which is used by the CLR
176. o the HALCON operator set _paint dev_set_shape For an explanation see the menu item Visualization gt Shape see section 2 3 6 16 on page 43 dev_set_part This operator adjusts the coordinate system for image region XLD and other graphic output This is done by specifying the upper left and the lower right corner coordinates This specified part is shown in the entire graphics window If the width or height of the specified rectangle has a negative value e g Row1 gt Row2 the result is equivalent to the menu Visualization gt Zooming gt Reset see section 2 3 6 11 on page 42 the zoom mode is switched off 1 e the most recently displayed image fills the whole graphics window This feature of dev_set_part is not supported for exported C C Visual Basic Visual Basic NET and C code dev_display Iconic variables are displayed in the active graphics window by this operator It is reasonable to do this when the automatic output is suppressed see dev_update_window and File gt Options see section 2 3 3 11 on page 21 dev_elear_0b This operator deletes the iconic object stored in the HDevelop variable that is passed as the input parameter In the variable window the object is displayed as undefined with a as its icon dev_inspect_ctrl This operator opens an inspection window displaying the values of the variable passed to the op erator In most cases a list dialog is opened which shows all values of the variable In
177. objects inside the rectangle in the graphics window You can also enter the coordinates of the desired clipping manually by specifying the coordinates of the upper left corner and the lower right corner in the respective text fields Please note that the text fields sometimes behave unexpectedly Visualization Parameters x Lut Paint Pen Zoom Upper row Left column 30 193 Interactive Lower row Right column 234 263 Center row Center column js jz Interactive Reset Zoom out Zoomin Aspect Figure 2 25 Settings of parameter zoom Below the coordinates of the rectangle you see its center This center can also be specified inter actively using the button Interactive Activating this mode you first have to click with the left button into the active graphics window Now you can correct this position by again pressing the left mouse button To quit press the right mouse button The buttons Zoom Out and Zoom In activate a zooming with factor 2 or 0 5 respectively To get the image s full view back on your graphics window you simply click the checkbox Reset Using Lut you are able to load different look up tables for visualization see figure 2 26 With the help of a false color presentation you often get a better impression of the gray values of an image In the case of a true color display the image has to be redisplayed due to the missing support of a look up table in the graphics
178. of the operator or procedure the parameter types and parameter values You are able to modify the parameter values according to your image processing tasks For this you may use the values proposed by HDevelop or specify your own values The operator window consists of the following three parts e At the top you find the operator name field with which you can select operators or procedures e The large area below the operator name field is called the parameter display it is used to edit the parameters of an operator or procedure e The row of buttons at the bottom allows to control the parameter display 78 Graphical User Interface Note that the operator window is also used to edit the interface of a procedure This is described in section 2 4 3 on page 69 2 5 1 Operator Name Field The operator name field allows to select operators or procedures by specifying a substring of its name After pressing lt Return gt or pressing the button of the combo box the system is looking for all operators or procedures that contain the user specified substring If there is an unambiguous search result the operator or procedure is displayed immediately in the operator window If there are several matching results a combo box opens and displays all operators or procedures containing the specified substring see figure 2 51 By clicking the left mouse button you select one operator and the combo box disappears Now the operators parameters
179. on Interface in the program window compare section 2 4 3 on page 69 Note that the interface can only be edited for procedures that are not protected by a password for protected external procedures see section 2 4 3 3 on page 74 2 3 7 3 Procedures gt Delete Current If the current procedure is a local procedure it is deleted from the program and the main procedure becomes the current procedure All calls to the local procedure in the current program are replaced by 48 Graphical User Interface GuDevelop procedures_test dev loj x File Edit Execute Visualization Procedures Operators Suggestions Window Help Ej gt mele lull c Create Edit Interface D Current J Delete All Unused Copy Wyariable Watch 5 x Op Replace Procedure Calls E 10 x lec E MS Save Current as Clear a Active Make All Local Make All External Edit External Procedure Paths test_proc_ext init_writing test_proc_local init_writing2 omoDms Is 3181 r init_window HDevelop External Procedure opens an image in a window of appropriate size Figure 2 27 The menu Procedures comments This item is disabled if the current procedure has a procedure call on the call stack if it is the main procedure or if it is an external procedure 2 3 7 4 Procedures gt Delete All Unused All local procedures that cannot be reached by a
180. oncatenation can be applied in combination with strings or all numerical types if neces sary the operands are first transformed into strings according to their standard representation At least one of the operands has to be already a string so that the operator can act as a string concatenator In the following example a filename e g Name5 tiff is generated For this purpose two string constants Name and tiff and an integer value the loop index i are concatenated for i 1 to 5 by 1 read_image Bild Name i tiff endfor str r chr si s2 returns the index of the first last as a tuple occurrence of one character in s2 in string s1 or 1 if none of the characters occurs in the string str r str si s2 returns the index of the first last occurrence of string s2 in string sl or 1 if s2 does not occur in the string strlen s returns the number of characters in s s i selects a single character specified by index position from s The index ranges from zero to the length of the string minus The result of the operator is a string of length one 3 5 8 Comparison Operators 103 s i1 i2 returns all characters from the first specified index position i1 up to the second specified position i2 in s as a string The index ranges from zero to the length of the string minus 1 split s1 s2 divides the string s1 into single substrings The string is split at those positions where it contai
181. only if it contains no values or if you are not satisfied with the HALCON default values Text input To specify a parameter using your keyboard is the simplest but not the most often used method Here you have to click into a text field with the left mouse button This activates the field and prepares it for user input Simultaneously the writing position is marked by a vertical bar Now you may input numbers strings expressions or variables There are some editing functions to help you doing input lt Backspace gt deletes the character to the left and lt Delete gt deletes the one to the right You may also select invert a sequence of characters in the text field using the mouse If there is a succeeding input the marked region is going to be deleted first and afterwards the characters are going to be written in the text field You can find additional editing functions in section 6 1 on page 155 Combo box selection Using this input method you can obtain rapid settings of variables and constants To do so you have to click the button on the text field s right side A combo box is opened in which you may select an item Thus you are able to choose a certain variable or value without risking erroneous typing This item is transferred to the operator name field Previous entries are deleted Afterwards the combo box is closed If there are no variables or appropriate values the combo box remains closed Drag and drop from variabl
182. ontain meaningful values By pressing Apply the corresponding output variables are changed or created if necessary to allow you to inspect their values If you decide not to enter the line into the program body some unused variables may thus be created You can easily remove them by selecting File gt Cleanup Cancel Clicking Cancel clears the contents of the operator window Thus there are neither changes in the program nor in any variables Help Clicking Help invokes an appropriate help text for the selected operator For this the system 82 Graphical User Interface activates an HTML browser see section 6 3 on page 156 Note that this functionality is not available for procedure calls and thus the button is grayed out in this case 2 6 Variable Window There are two kinds of variables in HALCON corresponding to the two parameter types of HALCON iconic objects images regions and XLDs and control data numbers strings The corresponding vari ables are called iconic and control variables These variables may possess a value or may be undefined An undefined variable is created for example when loading a program or after inserting an operator with a new variable that is not executed immediately into a program You may access these undefined variables only by writing them If you try to read such a variable a runtime error occurs If a variable ob tains a value the variable type is specified more precisely A control vari
183. oolean operators and xor or and not are defined only for tuples of length 1 11 and 12 is set to true 1 if both operands are true 1 whereas 11 xor 12 returns true 1 if exactly one of both operands is true 11 or 12 returns true 1 if at least one of the operands is true 1 not 1 returns true 1 if the input is false 0 and false 0 if the input is true 1 Language 104 Language Ist Operand 2nd Operand Operation Result 1 1 0 true u true dd false 1222 1 2 false 1 2 3 1 2 false 4711 Hugo 4711 Hugo true Hugo hugo false 2 1 gt true 2 1 0 gt true 5 4 1 5 4 gt true 2 1 2 0 gt true true false gt true Hugo hugo lt true Table 3 13 Examples for the comparison of tuples 11 and 12 11 xor 12 11 or 12 not 1 logical and logical xor logical or negation Table 3 14 Boolean operators 3 5 10 Trigonometric Functions All these functions work on tuples of numbers as arguments The input can either be of type integer or real However the resulting type will be of type real The functions are applied to all tuple values and the resulting tuple has the same length as the input tuple For atan2 the two input tuples have to be of equal length Table 3 15 shows the provided trigonometric functions For the trigonometric functions the angle is specified in radians sin a cos a tan
184. or C can be selected see figure 2 5 Save in Sj HDevelop es x eyes Ke tuple E j ic Wl vessel History Mirar Broo misc_op wood_cells 4 Wiparticle Desktop Wroad_signs ZON sine En Wistamps OS exception string Mpa ioe fer u Save as type HDevelop dev hs Cancel My Network P 4 Figure 2 5 The dialog window to save a program to a file A dialog box similar to the window described in menu item File gt Open is opened in which you can specify the appropriate settings You may specify a new file name and a directory where to locate this file By clicking the combo box of the text field called Files of type you may indicate whether the HDevelop program remains an HDevelop program or is exported as a C C Visual Basic Visual Basic NET or C program or is transformed into an ASCII file In UNIX you select the file type by entering the corresponding file extension manually For C code you have to add cpp to the file name for C code c and for ASCII txt The extension is bas for Visual Basic vb for Visual Basic NET and cs for C Default type is the HDevelop type extension dev The details of code generation are described in chapter 4 on page 113 If you export an HDevelop program to a type of file different from the default type external proce dures are exported as well If the option Export All External Procedures is switched on see section 2 3 3 11 on page 21
185. orresponding directory structure afterwards outside of HDevelop The recognition of the procedures in HDevelop is still ensured as all subdirectories of the external procedure paths are scanned as well When editing already existing external procedures the changed procedures are stored in the paths they were found in 70 Graphical User Interface The next part of the dialog is used for the procedure interface parameters As mentioned earlier HDe velop procedure interfaces have the same structure as HALCON operator interfaces that is they may contain parameters of the four categories iconic input iconic output control input and control output in this order The procedure interface dialog contains four separate areas that offer the necessary functional ity for manipulating parameters These areas correspond to above parameter classes and are independent of each other Every area is marked with a label that describes the parameter class It contains a button for inserting new parameters which are always appended at the end of the parameter list The latter is displayed by an array of text fields containing the parameters names At the right of every parameter field is a button with which the corresponding parameter can be deleted from the list If there exist two or more parameters in a particular parameter category the dialog contains exchange buttons between every two neighboring parameters with which their positions in the interface
186. otation lt Ctrl gt F 27 Decimal 90 lt Ctrl gt G 27 Hexadecimal 90 lt Ctrl gt H 27 Octal 90 lt Ctrl gt N 16 lt Ctrl gt 0 16 online help HDevelop 63 lt Ctrl gt P 19 operator selection 60 78 lt Ctrl gt S 18 procedure selection 78 lt Ctrl gt V 26 Open Example Program 18 F5 28 open_file OpenFile 148 F6 29 open_window OpenWindow 59 60 128 F9 30 opening 138 Keycodes 155 operating systems UNIX 4 19 114 126 Language definition 89 Windows 3 114 126 Laws 135 Operation Line Width 43 57 Arithmetics 99 linear filters 135 Boolean 103 Load 66 Comparison 103 Loop String 100 Body 159 Trigonometric 104 low pass filter 137 Tuple 96 Operator main window HDevelop 11 14 62 Data base 160 mean filter 137 operator or procedure call runtime 65 166 Index Operator window 160 textttCancel 81 Enter 82 Ok 82 operator window HDevelop 11 65 67 77 control buttons 80 operator name field 78 operator parameter display 78 Operators menu HDevelop 53 Control 53 Develop 8 55 File Images 4 Filter Smoothing 6 Graphics Window 60 System Database 60 others 59 Optimization 114 orientation_region OrientationRegion 41 Output 21 Parallel HALCON 114 126 Parameter expressions 93 Parameter types 89 pixel type 34 procedure passwd 50 Procedures menu HDevelop 47 Copy 48 Create 47 69 Delete All Unused 48 Delete Current 47 Edit External Procedu
187. otected procedures see section 2 4 3 3 on page 74 2 3 8 Menu Operators This menu item comprises all HALCON and HDevelop operators including the HDevelop control con structs 2 3 8 1 Operators gt Control Here you may select control structures for the program This involves the execution of a program segment henceforth named body depending on a test if and ifelse and the repetition of a program segment for while and break Furthermore you may stop the program s execution at any position stop or terminate HDevelop exit The operators assign and insert do not influence the execu tion but serve to specify values for control data assignment The operator comment is used to add a comment that means any sequence of characters to the program The operator return terminates the current procedure call and returns to the calling procedure see section 2 2 on page 12 for more information about HDevelop procedures The corresponding menu is shown in figure 2 32 Selecting a menu item displays the corresponding control construct in the operator window where you can set the necessary parameters After specifying all parameters you may transfer the construct into your program A direct execution for loops and conditions is not possible in contrast to other HDevelop and HALCON operators because you have to specify the loop s and condition s body first to obtain useful semantics If necessary you may execute the program after the
188. p Tricks 155 Chapter 6 Tips amp Tricks This chapter contains helpful information for working with HDevelop 6 1 Keycodes In order to speed up the entering of values in the input fields of HDevelop e g operator parameters several keycodes are defined which have special functions They conform to the standards of the Emacs editor This feature is only available for UNIX systems Some of them are shown in table 6 1 Delete Delete single character at current cursor position lt Ctrl gt Move the cursor to the beginning of the line lt Ctrl gt Move cursor left one character lt Ctrl gt Analogous to Delete Move cursor to last character in line lt Ctrl gt Move cursor right one character lt Ctrl gt Delete single character immediately preceding current cursor position a b d lt Ctrl gt e f h lt Ctrl gt k Delete all characters from current position to end of line b b d d f lt Meta gt Backward to previous word lt Alt gt Backward to previous word lt Meta gt Delete from current cursor position to end of current word lt Alt gt Delete from current cursor position to end of current word lt Meta gt Forward to next word lt Alt gt Forward to next word Table 6 1 Keycodes for special editing functions 156 Tips amp Tricks 6 2 Interactions During Program Execution The interpreter of HDevelop allows some user interact
189. p the condition has to be true in the first place The loop can be terminated immediately with the instruction break see below while lt Condition gt endwhile In section 5 3 on page 136 you can find an example for using the while loop The for loop is controlled by a start and termination value and an incrementation value that determines the number of loop steps These values may also be expressions which are evaluated immediately before the loop is entered The expressions may be of type integer or of type real If all input values are of type integer the loop variable will also be of type integer In all other cases the loop variable will be of type real If the start value is less or equal to the termination value the starting value is assigned to the loop index and the body of the loop is entered If the increment is less than zero the loop is entered if the start value is larger or equal to the end value Each time the body is executed the loop index is incremented by the incrementation value If the loop index is equal to the termination value the body of the loop is performed for the last time If the loop index is larger than the termination value the body will not be executed any longer Please note that the loop index does not need to become equal to the termination value in order to terminate the loop The loop index is set to the termination value when the loop is being left 3For negative increment values the loop is ter
190. pacitors This is quite simple because you have a color image and both component types have different colors The input image consists of three channels containing the red green and blue channels Since segmentation in the RGB space is difficult you have to transform the image into the HSV space Here the color information is stored in one single channel The right side of figure 5 12 shows the image representation in this channel Hue Elements that are too small can be eliminated via select_shape The program sequence to extract resistors and capacitors is shown below read_image ICs ic decompose3 ICs Red Green Blue trans_from_rgb Red Green Blue Hue Saturation Intensity threshold Saturation Colored 100 255 reduce_domain Hue Colored HueColored threshold HueColored Blue 114 137 connection Blue BlueConnect select_shape BlueConnect BlueLarge area and 150 100000 shape_trans BlueLarge Condensators rectangle2 threshold HueColored Red 10 19 connection Red RedConnect select_shape RedConnect RedLarge area and 150 100000 shape_trans RedLarge Resistors rectangle2 If you look closer at this program segment you will notice some obvious enhancements that can be made 5 7 Devices 145 One is necessary due to the color model The thresholding of the color image chooses all pixels with a certain color This selection is independent of the co
191. pes integer and real are used under the same syntactical rules as in C Integer numbers can be input in the standard decimal notation in hexadecimal by prefixing the number with Ox and in octal by prefixing the number with 0 For example 4711 123 Oxfeb12 073421 73 815 0 32214 56 17 32e 122 32E19 Data items of type integer or real are converted to their machine internal representations real becomes the C type double 8 bytes and integer becomes the C type 1ong 4 or 8 bytes string A string string is a sequence of characters that is enclosed in single quotes The maximum string length is limited to 1024 characters Special characters like the line feed are represented in the C like notation as you can see in table 3 2 see the reference of the C language for comparison 3 2 Control Types and Constants 91 Meaning Abbreviation Notation line feed NL LF n horizontal tabulator HT t vertical tabulator VT v backspace BS b carriage return CR r form feed FF f bell BEL a backslash single quote Vv Table 3 2 Surrogates for special characters Examples of strings are shown in table 3 3 String Meaning Hugo letters 10 9 numbers not real Text n NL at the end of the string At Text1 Mt Text2 two tabs in a text Sobel s edge filter single quote within the text gt c Programs MVTec Halcon images Directory Table 3 3
192. r example 4 5 Code Generation for C 125 When handling exceptions you also have to be aware that the COM interface always resets the output parameters at the beginning of the operator execution Thus when the exception occurs output variables are set to Nothing Therefore you cannot use the values of variables used as output parameters of the operator causing the exception 4 4 3 3 Memory Management The NET Framework s runtime environment CLR Common Language Runtime has a mechanism called garbage collector which is used by the CLR to remove no longer needed NET objects from memory As mentioned earlier in the exported C code every iconic object is represented by a NET HUntypedObjectX object which contains a reference to a COM HUntypedObjectX object From the garbage collector s point of view a NET HUntypedObjectX object is rather small Thus it might not be collected from memory although the underlying iconic object e g an image might in fact occupy a large portion of memory In order to avoid memory leaks caused by this effect in the exported code every iconic object is deleted explicitly before it is assigned a new value 4 5 Code Generation for C This section describes how to create a HALCON application in C starting from a program developed in HDevelop 4 5 1 Basic Steps 4 5 1 1 Program Export The first step is to export the program using the menu File gt Save As Here select the language C and save it
193. ractions as a sequence of operators in the program To do so you select this option From now on interactions are inserted as a program line in the program window For example selecting the graphic color red by choosing the appropriate menu 2 3 3 Menu File 23 inserts the program line dev_set_color red into the program window Show Variable Usage If you activate a variable by single clicking on it all lines in the program that contain the variable are marked on the left with a black frame This works with iconic and control variables You can activate one iconic and one control variable simultaneously Each activated variable is marked by a black background for the name in the variable window Show Low Level Errors Low level errors of HALCON are normally invisible for the user because they are transferred into more comprehensive error messages or simply ignored Activating this item generates a message box each time a low level error occurs Automatic Program Save If you activate this option the program is automatically saved before each execution of the pro gram i e before a Run or Step operation The file name the program is saved to is the file name of the current program Therefore if you create a new program you must first select File gt Save As manually to give the program a file name Experienced Programmer If this option is activated the internal temporary memory usage of the last operator or proce
194. rameter positions see section 3 5 on page 93 iconic objects may only be handled by using HALCON operators The most important operators to select and combine iconic objects are shown in this example The task is to search the eyes of the mandrill in figure 5 17 Figure 5 17 Mandrill and the detected result This is a simple task First we extract the bright parts by a thresholding Then we have to examine the connected components according to their shape and size to select the eyes At this you could use the operator select_shape and get a fast program of five lines that processes the task For demonstration purpose we use a kind of low level version instead every region is extracted separately and examined afterwards If it conforms to a given shape it is added to a result variable 150 Program Examples dev_close_window read_image Image monkey threshold Image Region 128 255 connection Region ConnectedRegions select_shape ConnectedRegions CompactRegions gt compactness and 1 5 1 8 Number CompactRegions Eyes for i 1 to Number by 1 SingleSelected CompactRegions i area_center SingleSelected Area Row Column dev_set_color green if Area gt 500 and Area lt 50000 dev_set_color red Eyes SingleSelected Eyes endif endfor Note that you have to specify the number of regions count_obj in order to run a for loop from 1 to Number With
195. re Paths 50 Edit Interface 47 Make All External 50 Make All Local 50 Print Current 50 Replace Procedure Call 49 Save Current As 49 50 procedures HDevelop 3 12 47 53 69 call stack 12 13 31 copy 48 create 24 47 71 delete 47 48 export 19 23 128 C 125 C 113 C 123 Visual Basic 118 Visual Basic NET 120 external 3 13 49 50 path 13 50 69 hierarchy 3 insert 18 interface 24 47 49 69 78 local 3 13 50 main 3 12 13 111 114 118 120 123 125 128 print 20 50 replace 49 return 111 save 18 19 49 step into 30 step out 30 Program window 160 program window HDevelop 11 23 25 28 31 66 break point BP 29 31 32 iconify 58 62 program counter PC 12 16 21 28 29 32 67 80 programming language C 1 C 1 CH 1 COM Delphi Borland 1 Visual Basic 1 programs HDevelop 16 comment 55 load 16 print 19 20 50 run 21 28 29 conditional execution 53 control structures 53 loop execution 53 save 18 19 stop 29 55 protectedHDevelop procedure 74 read_image ReadImage 4 58 60 90 Index 167 Redo 26 66 reduce_domain ReduceDomain 35 39 145 153 Region 82 160 Empty 159 region 38 43 features 39 histogram 38 gray value features 41 shape features 40 region of interest ROI 146 152 153 remove 138 Reserved words 108 reset_obj_db ResetObjDb 60 reset_obj_db 157 Restrictions 111 115 119 122
196. re into a locked procedure Either restart HDevelop or select the protected but temporarily editable procedure from the list of editable procedures press the button with the leftwards pointing arrow the procedure then moves into the list of locked procedures and press the Close button to close the dialog The next time you try to edit the procedure the password dialog asks you to enter the correct password Note that the procedure is only saved as long as it is editable When trying to lock an external procedure that was not saved after being modified a dialog appears that asks you to save the program first Be aware also that after locking a procedure no undo or redo can be applied to the preceding user actions anymore e Permanently remove the protection from a protected external procedure If not already done change the procedure into a temporarily editable procedure like described above select the procedure from the list of editable procedures 2 3 8 Menu Operators 53 press the Clear button to remove the password the P behind the procedure name is then removed as well press the Close button to close the dialog and save the program The procedure can now be edited via the program window and remains editable also after saving the program and restarting HDevelop For an alternative approach to change the edit status of an external procedure and further information about pr
197. re itself being de scribed by its interface and program body plus its lists of local procedure body variables and procedure parameters Additionally the current status of the HDevelop runtime engine is defined by the call stack which contains all procedure calls in reversed order with a call to the main procedure always being the first procedure call on the stack Program execution is generally continued in the top most procedure call on the stack which belongs to the last called procedure Every procedure call is defined by the program counter or PC and by the values of the variables of the called procedure The HDevelop GUI is designed to display one procedure and procedure call at a time The rest of this manual will refer to the currently displayed procedure and procedure call as to the current procedure and procedure call respectively The procedure or program body of the current procedure is always displayed in HDevelop s program window while the interface of the current procedure can be viewed optionally in the procedure interface dialog see section 2 4 3 1 on page 69 The current procedure variables are displayed in the variable window with procedure interface parameters being specially marked There are multiple ways how the current procedure and procedure call can change all of which are going to be explained in more detail in the following sections Here it should only be mentioned that the current procedure can be changed directly t
198. ready created an image the size 512 x 512 is used The handling of graphics windows is described in more detail in section 2 7 on page 84 2 3 6 2 Visualization gt Reset Parameters Here the display parameters of the active graphics window are set to their initial state the state after starting the program The only exception is the size of the window To clear the history of previously displayed objects you can use Visualization gt Clear Window to set the size Visualization gt Size Window 2 3 6 3 Visualization gt Close Window Selecting this item closes the active graphics window 2 3 6 4 Visualization gt Clear Window Via this menu item the active graphics window is cleared The history previously displayed objects of the window is also removed 2 3 6 5 Visualization gt Pixel Info Here you can open an inspection display as depicted in figure 2 17 This is used for interactive exam ination of gray values of images Apart from this the size pixel type and the number of channels are displayed The upper part of the dialog contains a gauge to display the gray value graphically The range goes from O left to 255 right Normally the gray value of the first channel is displayed with a black bar For 34 Graphical User Interface WPixel Information H xi osre E Row coum Width Height 652 494 sua 1 sows ee Figure 2 17 Online gray value inspection and basic image features color images
199. rts a string representing a number to an integer or a real depending on the type of the number Note that strings starting with Ox are interpreted as hexadecimal numbers and strings starting with O as octal numbers for example the string 20 is converted to the integer 20 7020 to 16 and 0x20 to 32 If called with a string that does not represent a number or with a variable of the type integer or real number returns a copy of the input environment returns the value of an environment variable Input is the name of the environment variable as a string ord gives the ASCII number of a character as an integer chr converts an ASCII number to a character ords converts a tuple of strings into a tuple of ASCID integers chrt converts a tuple of integers into a string 3 5 14 Operator Precedence Table 3 19 shows the precedence of the operators for control data Some operations like functions t etc are left out because they mark their arguments clearly Language 108 Language band bxor bor and XOT or lt gt lt gt 1 h unary minus not Table 3 19 Operator precedence increasing from top to bottom 3 6 Reserved Words The strings shown in table 3 20 are reserved words and their usage is strictly limited to their predefined meaning They cannot be used as variables true xor ord bnot cos atan exp floor abs deg max rand str
200. ry HALCONROOT XexamplesAciHHDevelopTemplate This project contains a form with a display window HWindowXCtr1 and a button labeled Run The file generated by HDevelop has to be added to this project This is done by using the menu Project gt Add Existing Item and selecting the file Now the project is ready for execution Run the project and then press the button Run on the form which will call the exported code 4 4 2 Program Structure The file created by HDevelop contains a subroutine with the corresponding name for every HDevelop procedure except the main procedure which is contained in the subroutine action Iconic input and output parameters of a procedure are passed as HUntypedObjectX and out HUntypedObjectX respec tively while control input and output parameters are passed as object and out object respectively The subroutine RunHalcon contains a call to the subroutine action and has a parameter Window which is of type HWindowX This is the link to the window on the form to which all output operations are passed In addition another subroutine is created with the name InitHalcon This subroutine applies the same initializations that HDevelop performs Most of the variables iconic as well as control are declared locally inside the corresponding subroutines Iconic variables belong to the class HUntypedObjectX and control variables belong to object Depending on the program additional subroutines and variables are declar
201. s For a detailed description see section 2 3 6 on page 32 These icons are shortcuts for the following menu items Visualization gt Pixel Info Visualization gt Zooming Visualization gt Gray Histogram Info Visualization gt Feature Histogram Info Visualization gt Region Info For a detailed description see section 2 3 6 on page 32 Figure 2 41 The HDevelop tool bar 2 4 Program Window The program window is divided into three areas At the top you find elements for selecting or creating procedures Below this the column at the left side contains the program counter the insertion cursor and optionally one or more break points The main part of the program window contains the program code of the current HDevelop proce dure These three parts are described in the following sections but in the reverse sequence 2 4 1 The Program Area 67 2 4 1 The Program Area The main part of the program window contains the program code of the current HDevelop procedure Here the user has the possibility to obtain information about the inserted operators or procedure calls A program is built up such that every line contains exactly one operator or procedure call with its pa rameters or an assignment An exception are the conditional constructs if and ifelse respectively and the loop constructs while and for They contain two and in case of ifelse three program lines which enclose the body Every li
202. s of an external procedure can be changed via the proce 2 4 3 Creating and Editing Procedures 75 dure interface dialog or since HALCON 7 1 2 also via Procedures gt Edit External Procedure Passwords see section 2 3 7 12 on page 50 The main differences of both approaches will be summa rized later in this section By default a procedure is created as a local procedure inside the procedure interface dialog see fig ure 2 47 4Operator Procedure 0 x Procedure Interface init_hdevelop y Procedure name init_hdevelop IV Local Short description configure the behavior of the HDevelop interpreter Chapter External Directory H workitest_dev_sittests_ext_procs ext_procs Figure 2 47 For a local procedure the check box local is activated There to make it external the check box local has to be disabled Now the Enter Edit Password button appears see figure 2 48 Ignoring it leads to a common external procedure that is not protected 4Operator Procedure a oy xj Procedure Interface int_hdevelop y Procedure name init_hdevelop Local Enter Edit Password Short description configure the behavior of the HDevelop interpreter Chapter External Directory H work test_dev_stests_ext_procsiext_procs Figure 2 48 After disabling the check box local the procedure becomes an external procedure If you want to protect the procedure by a password press the Enter Edit Password button Then a separa
203. s that are no annual rings To eliminate them you have to create the connected components connection and suppress all regions that are too small select_shape Counting the rings becomes difficult as there might be fissures in the wood see figure 5 8 SS AA gt A z AAA Se ed E oaea A EAS Hi Figure 5 8 Annual rings of a tree Thus we suggest the following method You define the start and end point of a line across the an nual rings using your mouse Then the number of intersections with annual rings is counted along this line This can be done by the following HALCON operators The start and end points represented by their x and y coordinates are transformed into a line gen_region_line This line is intersected intersection with the annual rings SelectedRegions The number of the connected regions count _obj in this intersection is the number o
204. ses of HALCON COM to extend the functionality 4 4 3 Limitations and Troubleshooting Besides the restrictions mentioned in this section and in section 4 6 on page 126 please also check the description of the HDevelop operators in section 2 3 8 2 on page 55 4 4 3 1 Variable Names The export adds the prefix ho_ to all local iconic and hv_ to all local control variables respectively in order to avoid collisions with reserved words 4 4 3 2 Exception Handling In HDevelop every exception normally causes the program to stop and report an error message in a dialog window This might not be useful in Cf The standard way to handle this in Vi sual Basic NET is by using the try catch mechanism This allows to access the reason for the exception and to continue accordingly Thus for HDevelop programs containing error handling dev_ set_check give_error the corresponding code is automatically included Every op erator call for which it is assumed that the HALCON error mechanism is turned off is enclosed in a try block followed by a catch block The latter handles the exception and assigns the corresponding HALCON error number to the error variable activated by dev_error_var or to a local error variable otherwise Please note that a call of dev_ set_check give_error has no influence on the operator call The exception will always be raised This is also true for messages like H_MSG_FAIL which are not handled as exceptions in C fo
205. sholding is performed Correct road markings are equivalent to bright areas in the search window ROD Figure 5 19 Search areas for markings left and segmentation right MinSize 30 set_system init_new_image false read_image Motorway motorway count_seconds Seconds1 gen_grid_region Grid MinSize MinSize lines 512 512 clip_region Grid GridRoad 130 10 450 502 reduce_domain Motorway GridRoad Mask sobel_amp Mask Gradient sum_abs 3 threshold Gradient Points 40 255 dilation_rectangle1 Points RegionDilation MinSize MinSize reduce_domain Motorway RegionDilation SignsGray threshold SignsGray Signs 190 255 count_seconds Seconds2 Time Seconds2 Seconds1 dev_display Signs 1 Only standard operators have been used 2 Only encapsulated data structures have been used 3 Despite optimization the program is quite comprehensible It is reduced to the lower image half with The HALCON program needs an average of 20ms on a standard Pentium Notice that this is even possible under the following restrictions 154 Program Examples 4 The program is very short This example shows that you can write efficient programs even while using complex data structures Hence a significant reduction of development time is achieved Furthermore data encapsulation is a basic condition for the portability of the whole system and the user software Tips am
206. sic NET and C code dev_update_window dev_update_var dev_update_time dev_update_pc Using these operators you may configure the output at runtime It corresponds to the settings in menu File gt Options see section 2 3 3 11 on page 21 These operators are not supported for exported C C Visual Basic Visual Basic NET and C code dev_set_check This operator is equivalent to set_check of the HALCON library It is used to handle runtime errors caused by HALCON operators that are executed inside HDevelop The parameter value give_error which is the default leads to a stop of the program together with an error dialog if a value not equal to H_MSG_TRUE is returned Using the value give_error errors or other messages are ignored and the program can continue This mode is useful in connection with operators like get_mposition file_exists read_image or test_region_point which can return H_MSG_FAIL An example can be found in section 5 10 on page 150 dev_error_var This operator specifies a variable that contains the return value error code of an operator after execution This value can be used to continue depending on the given value dev_error_var is normally used in connection with dev_set_check Note that as the procedure concept in HDevelop only allows for local variables the variable set by dev_error_var will only be valid in calls to the relevant procedure Furthermore every corresponding procedure call will have
207. sic NET routine End Because this routine has no parameter the parameters of exit are suppressed 4 3 2 5 Used Classes There are only six classes types that are used Object for control parameters and HUntypedObjectX for iconic data In addition there is the container class HTupleX which comprises all operators of HALCON processing tuples in this case the data type Object Then there are the classes HWindowXCtr1 and its low level content HWindowX HWindowXCtrl is used inside the project for the output window and a variable of class HWindowX directs the output to this window Finally the class HOperatorSetX is used as a container for all HALCON operators There is no need for other classes as long as the program has the same functionality as in HDevelop When editing a generated program you are free to use any of the classes of HALCON COM to extend the functionality 122 Code Export 4 3 3 Limitations and Troubleshooting Besides the restrictions mentioned in this section and in section 4 6 on page 126 please also check the description of the HDevelop operators in section 2 3 8 2 on page 55 4 3 3 1 Variable Names In contrast to C C or HDevelop Visual Basic NET has many reserved words Thus the export adds the prefix ho_ to all iconic and hv_ to all control variables respectively in order to avoid collisions with these reserved words 4 3 3 2 Exception Handling In HDevelop every exception normally causes the program t
208. splayed in the combo box Procedures on top of the dialog The check box to the right of the combo box determines whether the procedure is a local or external procedure For external procedures additionally the edit status can be specified that determines if the procedure can be viewed and modified by all users or if it is protected by a password see section 2 4 3 3 on page 74 The text field below the combo box can be used to enter an optional short description for the procedure The short description of a procedure is treated like the short information of an HALCON operator i e it is displayed in HDevelop s status bar when double clicking on a procedure call in the program window or selecting a procedure from the menu The next text field can be used to specify chapter and section separated by a slash so that your procedures can be displayed thematically ordered in the list at the bottom of the menu Procedures Next the path is displayed where the procedure is stored if it is an external procedure When storing the external procedure for the first time this path corresponds always to the first path in the list of external procedure paths in the dialog Procedures gt Edit External Procedure Paths see section 2 3 7 11 on page 50 Therefore the structure created by chapters and sections in the text field before does not correspond to the automatically created directory structure At least for the external procedures you can create the c
209. ssued by HDevelop e Window size In exported Visual Basic Visual Basic NET and C programs the size of the window on the form is predefined 512 x 512 thus it will normally not fit your image size Therefore you must adapt the size interactively or by using the properties of the window e Displaying results Normally the result of every operator is displayed in the graphics window of HDevelop This is not the case when using an exported program It behaves like the HDevelop program running 4 6 6 Graphics Windows 129 with the option update window off We recommend to insert the operator dev_display in the HDevelop program at each point where you want to display data This will not change the behavior of the HDevelop program but result in the appropriate call in the exported code When generating code for C or C close the default graphics window using dev_close_window and open a new one using dev_open_window before the first call of dev_display in order to assure a correct export Displaying images In HDevelop images are automatically scaled to fit the current window size This is not the case in exported programs For example if you load and display two images of different size the second one will appear clipped if it is larger than the first image or filled up with black areas if it is smaller For a correct display you must use the operator dev_set_part before displaying an image with dev_display as follows
210. stead of e The exponent always contains at least two digits However if the value to be printed requires an exponent greater than two digits additional exponent digits are printed as necessary g G The floating point number argument is printed in style f or e or in style E in the case of a G conversion character with the precision specifying the number of significant digits The style used depends on the value converted style e is used only if the exponent resulting from the conversion is less than h or greater than or equal to the precision Trailing zeros are removed from the result A radix character appears only if it is followed by a digit s The argument is taken to be a string and characters from the string are printed until the end of the string or the number of characters indicated by the precision specification of the argument is reached If the precision is omitted from the argument it is interpreted as infinite and all characters up to the end of the string are printed b Similar to the s conversion specifier except that the string can contain backslash escape se quences which are then converted to the characters they represent In no case does a nonexistent or insufficient field width cause truncation of a field if the result of a conversion is wider than the field width the field is simply expanded to contain the conversion result Examples for the string conversion can be found in the program string dev The string c
211. t When creating a new procedure from selected program lines HDevelop automatically determines suit able interface parameters for the procedure from the usage of the variables in the selected code The following different options set in File gt Options can be used to determine the procedure parameters e Only In Only Out Variables that are exclusively input and output variables become input and output procedure parameters respectively e Only In All Out Variables that are exclusively input variables become input parameters while all output variables become output parameters This is the default option in HDevelop e All In Only Out This setting is symmetrical to the previous setting e All In All Out All input and output variables become input and output procedure parameters respectively The classification of variables in the selected program lines is performed separately for iconic and control variables If a variable is an input as well as an output variable it is assigned to the first category i e the corresponding procedure parameter becomes an input parameter see figure 2 44 After the procedure is created and added to the program there exist two ways on how to proceed If the option Replace Selection By Call see menu item File gt Options see section 2 3 3 11 on page 21 is not activated the newly created procedure becomes the current procedure Otherwise the operator dialog is opened and a suggested call to the n
212. t Redo This is a quick way to restore the state before the last undo operation 2 3 4 3 Edit gt Cut You may use the items Edit gt Cut Edit gt Copy and Edit gt Paste for changing the procedure body contents First you have to select the part of the program at least one program line that has to be changed use the left mouse button To delete this part select the item Edit gt Cut keyboard shortcut lt Ctrl gt X The deleted program part is stored in an internal buffer By using the item Edit gt Paste keyboard shortcut lt Ctrl gt V the buffer remains unchanged 2 3 4 4 Edit gt Copy By selecting Edit gt Copy keyboard shortcut lt Ctrl gt C you store the selected program lines directly in an internal buffer Additionally for every procedure call line the corresponding procedure and all procedures that can be reached from it are copied to the buffer This is necessary in order to obtain a con sistent program when pasting procedure call lines to a program in which the corresponding procedures might not exist 2 3 4 5 Edit gt Paste To insert this buffer in the current HDevelop procedure body you place the insertion cursor at the de sired position and then select the menu item Edit gt Paste keyboard shortcut lt Ctr1 gt V If the buffer contains procedures that do not exist they are added to the current program The mechanism of copying and pasting procedure call lines together with the corresponding proced
213. t Accept display the original image and then select the appropriate thresholds This way only one window is needed for the visualization For the second possibility you can display the derived image in one window activate another window or open a new window display the original image there activate the first window again open the histogram tool activate the second window again set Send to to active and select your thresholds Although in this case it is not necessary to deselect Accept it is advantageous to do so because this prevents the histogram from being updated if you click into a graphics window accidentally Scaling the gray values If Display is set to scale the gray values of the image are scaled such that the gray value 0 of the scaled image corresponds to the minimum selected gray value and the gray value 255 to the maximum selected gray value Again the combo box Send determines the graphics window in which the result is displayed This mode is useful to interactively set a window of gray values that should be displayed with a large dynamic range 38 Graphical User Interface 2 3 6 8 Visualization p gt Feature Histogram Info This menu item opens a sophisticated tool for the inspection of feature histograms In contrast to the gray value histogram described above this tool does not inspect individual pixels but regions or XLDs for these iconic objects it displays the distribution of values of a selected f
214. t in the more intuitive form as Areas Radius 1 Area To construct a tuple with insert normally an empty tuple is used as initial value and the elements are inserted in a loop Tuple for i 0 to 5 by 1 Tuple i sqrt real i endfor As you can see from this example the indices of a tuple start at 0 An insertion into a tuple can generally be performed in one of the following ways 1 Incase of appending the value at the back or at the front the concatenation can be used Here the operator assign is used with the following parameters Language 96 Language assign Tuple NewVal Tuple which is displayed as Tuple Tuple NewVal 2 If the index position is somewhere in between the operator insert has to be used It takes the following arguments as input first the tuple in which the new value should be inserted then the new value and after that the index position as the third input parameter The result the fourth parameter is almost identical with the input tuple except of the new value at the defined index position In the following example regions are dilated with a circle mask and afterwards the areas are stored into the tuple Areas In this case the operator insert is used read_image Mreut mreut threshold Mreut Region 190 255 Areas for Radius 1 to 50 by 1 dilation_circle Region RegionDilation Radius area_center RegionDilation Area Row Colu
215. t manner It is assumed that you have already selected or executed an operator in a previous step Depending on this operator five different suggestions are offered Figure 2 36 shows possible successor suggestions for operator read_image HDevelop marks dev Ioj x File Edit Execute Visualization Procedures Operators UPESOS Window Help oele eal pol eE Atenas gt A AS 4 Operator Procedure Predecessor gt Successo gt Operator Procedure read_image regiongrowing 5 count_channels Image Christof y foe class_ndim_norm FileName marks y A gauss_image fil_interlace a Enter Apply Cancel 200m_image_size zoom_image_factor crop_part write_image rgb1_to_gray Interpolate 2 video half images Figure 2 36 Suggestions to select a successor of HALCON operator read_image Suggestions are separated into groups as described below 3 Operators of the menus Control and Develop are special operators of HDevelop Thus you will not find them in the reference manuals for HALCON C HALCON C or HALCON COM 2 3 9 Menu Suggestions 61 2 3 9 1 Suggestions gt Predecessor Many operators require a reasonable or necessary predecessor operator For example before comput ing junction points in a skeleton junctions_skeleton you have to compute this skeleton itself skeleton To obtain a threshold image you have to use a lowpass filter before exec
216. t procedure is the main procedure 3 8 Limitations This section summarizes the restrictions of the HDevelop language e Maximum number of objects per parameter 100000 e Maximum length of strings 1024 characters e Maximum length of a variable name 256 characters Language 112 Language Code Export 113 Chapter 4 Code Export The idea of code export or code generation is as follows After developing a program according to the given requirements it has to be translated into its final environment For this the program is transferred into another programming language that can be compiled HDevelop allows to export a developed HDevelop program to the programming languages C Visual Basic Visual Basic NET C and C by writing the corresponding code to a file The following sec tions describe the general steps of program development using this feature for the five languages C section 4 1 COM Visual Basic section 4 2 on page 117 COM Visual Basic NET section 4 3 on page 120 COM C section 4 4 on page 123 and C section 4 5 on page 125 including some language specific details of the code generation and optimization aspects Because HDevelop does more than just execute a HALCON program the behavior of an exported pro gram will differ in some points from its HDevelop counterpart A prominent example is that in HDe velop all results are automatically displayed while in the exported programs you have
217. tables which can be used to display gray value images and color images in different intensities and colors In the case of a true color display the image has to be redisplayed due to the missing support of a look up table in the graphics hardware For color images only the gray look up tables can be used which change each channel separately with the same table 44 Graphical User Interface Visualization Parameters x Pen Zoom Lut Paint Update Mode fa0 plot_hidden Enos Row Scale Eye height Eye distance 0 150 l 110 160 Column Step 0 Y Colored 7 Figure 2 23 Settings of parameter paint 2 3 6 18 Visualization gt Paint This menu item defines the mode to display gray value images For more information see the menu item Visualization gt Set Parameters below 2 3 6 19 Visualization p Set Parameters By using this menu item a dialog called Visualization Parameters is opened which handles more complex parameter settings Select one setting with your left mouse button and the window brings up the according parameter box Each box contains different buttons text fields or check boxes to modify parameters Each box has an Update button If this button is pressed every change of a parameter will immediately lead to a redisplay of the image regions or XLD in the graphics window If the button is off the parameters become active for the next display of an object double click on an icon or e
218. te window appears and the password must be entered twice see figure 2 49 If both times the same password is used a confirmation of the password by the Ok button of the password window is successful Otherwise an error message is raised and you have to repeat the password assignment After the password was confirmed the Enter Edit Password button of the procedure interface dialog changes into the Change Edit Status button see figure 2 50 The final assignment of the password to the procedure is done after submitting the changes of the procedure via the 0k button of the procedure interface dialog and saving the program By saving the program the protected procedure is saved in a binary format in the directory it was found in or if saved as an external procedure for the first time in the first path specified in the list of external procedure 76 Graphical User Interface Enter Edit Password xj Password BAMA Confirm s Clear Cancel Figure 2 49 After pressing Enter Edit Password a password can be assigned via the password window Dperator Procedure E jol xj Procedure Interface int_hdevelop y Procedure name init_hdevelop I Local Change Edit Password Short description configure the behavior of the HDevelop interpreter Chapter External Directory H workttest_dev_sttests_ext_procslext_procs Figure 2 50 After confirming the password the procedure is a protected external procedure To change t
219. tenation mean a mean value deviation a standard deviation cumul a cumulative sums of a tuple median a median of a tuple select_rank a i element at rank i of a tuple sqrt a square root y a deg a convert radians to degrees rad a convert degrees to radians real a convert integer to real int a truncate real to integer round a convert real to integer abs a absolute value of a integer or real fabs a absolute value of a always real ceil a smallest integer value not smaller than a floor a largest integer value not greater than a fmod al a2 fractional part of a1 a2 with the same sign as a1 sgn a element wise sign of a tuple Table 3 17 Numerical functions Language 106 Language The functions min and max select the minimum and the maximum values of the tuple values All of these values either have to be of type string or integer real It is not allowed to mix strings with numerical values The resulting value will be of type real if at least one of the elements is of type real If all elements are of type integer the resulting value will also be of type integer The same applies to the function sum that determines the sum of all values If the input arguments are strings string concatenation will be used instead of addition The functions mean deviation sqrt deg rad fabs ceil floor and fmod can work with integer and real the result is always of type real The function mean calculates the mean value a
220. tension which is bas The result is a new file with the given name and the extension 13 bas 118 Code Export 4 2 1 2 The Visual Basic 6 Template The exported file is intended to be used together with the predefined Visual Basic 6 project that can be found in the directory HALCONROOT examples vb HDevelopTemplate This project contains a form with a display window HWindowXCtr1 and a button labeled Run The file generated by HDevelop has to be added to this project This is done by using the menu Project gt Add Module gt Existing and selecting the file Now the project is ready for execution Run the project and then press the button Run on the form which will call the exported code 4 2 2 Program Structure The file created by HDevelop contains a subroutine with the corresponding name for every HDe velop procedure except the main procedure which is contained in the subroutine action Iconic input and output parameters of a procedure are passed as ByVal HUntypedObjectX and ByRef HUntypedObjectX respectively while control input and output parameters are passed as ByVal Variant and ByRef Variant respectively The subroutine RunHalcon contains a call to the subrou tine action and has a parameter Window which is of type HWindowX This is the link to the window on the form to which all output operations are passed In addition another subroutine is created with the name InitHalcon This subroutine
221. the case of 58 Graphical User Interface a frame grabber handle a description of this frame grabber is opened In addition this dialog al lows online grabbing of images This operator is not supported for exported C C Visual Basic Visual Basic NET and C code dev_close_inspect_ctrl This is the opposite operator to dev_inspect_ctrl and closes the inspect window This operator is not supported for exported C C Visual Basic Visual Basic NET and C code dev_map_par dev_unmap_par These operators open and close the parameter dialog which can also be opened using the menu Visualization gt Set Parameters see section 2 3 6 19 on page 44 This operator is not sup ported for exported C C Visual Basic Visual Basic NET and C code dev_map_var dev_unmap_var These operators iconify the variable window dev_unmap_var and retransform the iconified win dow to the normal visualization size respectively dev_map_var This means that the variable window always remains visible on the display in one of the two ways of visualization These oper ators can be executed with the help of the window manager These operators are not supported for exported C C Visual Basic Visual Basic NET and CA code dev_map_prog dev_unmap_prog Analogously to dev_map_var and dev_unmap_var these operators iconifyiconify or deiconify the program window These operators are not supported for exported C C Visual Basic Visual Ba
222. the following you will learn the functionality of these windows and their use while creating HDevelop programs Please note that in the UNIX environment the main window the program window and the operator window are combined into one window Thus there are only three windows 2 1 Interacting with HDevelop You interact with HDevelop through its graphical user interface With the mouse you can manipulate visual controls such as menus or buttons in the HDevelop windows 12 Graphical User Interface You can use the mouse as follows e Clicking the left mouse button once you are able to select window specific components such as menu items iconic variables control variables action buttons checkboxes and you give the insertion focus to a specific text field Some of these text fields comprise a combo box which you may open in the same way Furthermore you select invert text in certain windows e g in the program window With this you are able to perform the general editor functions like cut copy and paste see section 2 3 4 on page 25 and section 2 3 12 on page 65 In the program window there is an extended mode to select lines by pressing the lt Shift gt or the lt Ctr1 gt key during the mouse click More than one line can be activated using the lt Shift gt key All lines between the last activation and the new one will become activated The lt Ctr1 gt key is used to activate or deactivate more than one line using si
223. the state of all other lines remains unchanged e The lt Shift gt key is used to activate a sequence of lines using one mouse click All lines between the most recent activation and the new one will become activated After the selection of lines the edit function can be activated by either using the menu Edit see sec tion 2 3 4 on page 25 or the tool bar see section 2 3 12 on page 65 or via the context menu of the column to the left see below Further information on the use of the mouse can be found in section 2 1 on page 11 2 4 2 Program Counter Insertion Cursor and Break Points The column to the left of the displayed program body contains the program counter PC represented as a green arrow pointing to a program line the insertion cursor a triangle between two program lines and optionally one or more break points BP a red STOP sign The program counter resides in the line of the next operator or procedure call to execute The insertion cursor indicates the position to insert a new program line A break point shows the program line on which the program is stopped In figure 2 42 you see a program and the column with the PC indicated as an arrow a BP and the insertion cursor You may position or activate these three labels as follows 68 Graphical User Interface 4 Program A x Procedures main Create Interface dev_close_window read_image Image monkey get_image_pointer1 Image Pointer
224. there is typically no need to export the main procedure which was probably used only for testing the functionality implemented in the corresponding real procedures Besides the program code the file contains all necessary include instructions All local variables iconic as well as control are declared in the corresponding procedures Iconic variables belong to the class Hobject and all other variables belong to HTuple 4 1 1 2 Compiling and Linking in Windows Environments The next step is to compile and link this new program In the Windows environment Visual C is used for the compiling and linking Example projects can be found in the directory HALCONROOT Nexamples cpp If you want to use Parallel HALCON you have to include the libraries parhalcon 1lib d11 and parhalconcpp 1lib d11 instead of halcon 1ib d11 and halconcpp 1ib d11 in your project see the Programmer s Guide chapter 6 on page 57 for more details 4 1 1 3 Compiling and Linking in UNIX Environments To compile and link the new program called e g test cpp under UNIX you can use the example makefile which can be found in the directory HALCONROOT examples cpp by calling make PROG test Alternatively you can set the variable PROG in makefile to test and then just type make You can link the program to the Parallel HALCON libraries by calling make parallel PROG test or just type make parallel if you set the variable PROG as described above
225. ting value for the loop e A last exception is an empty region This is one region that does not contain any pixels points 1 e the area number of points is 0 You must not confuse this case with the empty tuple because there the area is not defined The empty region is symbolized by an empty set icon 2 6 2 Area for Control Data To the right of the variable name you find their values in the default representation If you specify more than one value for one variable tuple they are separated by commas and enclosed by brackets If the number of values exceeds an upper limit the output is clipped This is indicated by three dots at the end of the tuple For undefined variables their name and a are shown in the variable field An empty tuple is represented by Both exceptions use the same symbols as the corresponding cases for the iconic variables Clicking on a variable will select it Similarly to iconic variables all program lines that use this variable are then marked with a black rectangle on the left Double clicking a control variable opens a window that displays all its values In most cases this will be a dialog containing a scrolled list This is helpful if you have tuple variables with a large number of values that you want to inspect For a frame grabber handle a dialog representing basic frame grabber parameters is opened see fig ure 2 54 Here you find the size name device port and other features of the
226. to file In UNIX you specify the language by giving the file the extension c A file will be created that contains the HDevelop program as C source code For every HDevelop procedure except the main procedure the exported file contains a C procedure with the corresponding name Iconic input and output parameters of a procedure are declared as Hobject and Hobject respectively while con trol input and output parameters are declared as Htuple and Htuplex respectively All procedures are declared at the beginning of the file The program body of the HDevelop main procedure is contained in a procedure action which is called in function main action and main can be excluded from compilation by inserting the instruction define NO_EXPORT_MAIN at the appropriate position in the application This can be useful if you want to integrate exported HDevelop code into your appli cation through specific procedure interfaces In that case there is typically no need to export the main procedure which was probably used only for testing the functionality implemented in the corresponding real procedures Besides the program code the file contains all necessary include instructions All local variables iconic as well as control are declared in the corresponding procedures Iconic variables belong to the class Hobject and all other variables belong to Htuple Please note that in the current version the generated C code is not optimized for readabili
227. to query the gray value of the corresponding pixel in the image which is then displayed in the window 5 11 Road Scene File name road_signs dev The computing time is a critical factor in many image analysis tasks Thus the system has to offer features to speed up the processing But direct hardware access must be avoided in any case All operators should work on encapsulated data structures To allow optimization for performance data structures have to be used that support transparent and efficient programming The example segmentation of a road scene demonstrates how HALCON helps to achieve this goal Here the task is to find the middle and border road markings of a motorway The program is performed by a normal workstation with a processing time of maximum 20 ms per half image video frequency at a resolution of 512 x 512 pixels In figure 5 18 you see an image of such a road sequence on the left side Assume that there is no specialized operator for this task Thus you have to make use of standard methods The data structure used consists of a gray value image with a covering mask i e domain ROD All operators work only on those parts of the image data that lie within the domain This can be 3See the Quick Guide for a short introduction to the data structures used by HDevelop 152 Program Examples Figure 5 18 Part of an image sequence left and search grid for marking band right exploited to reduce computatio
228. to remove no longer needed NET objects from memory As mentioned earlier in the exported Visual Basic NET code every iconic object is represented by a NET HUntypedObjectX object which contains a reference to a COM HUntypedObjectX object From the garbage collector s point of view a NET HUntypedObjectX object is rather small Thus it might not be collected from memory although the underlying iconic object e g an image might in fact occupy a large portion of memory In order to avoid memory leaks caused by this effect in the exported code every iconic object is deleted explicitly before it is assigned a new value 4 4 Code Generation for C 123 4 4 Code Generation for CH This section describes how to create a HALCON application in C starting from a program developed in HDevelop HALCON can be used together with C based on the COM interface of HALCON A detailed description of this interface can be found in the Programmer s Guide part III on page 69 4 4 1 Basic Steps 4 4 1 1 Export The first step is to export the program using the menu File gt Save As Here select the language C and save it to file In UNIX you specify the language by giving the file the corresponding extension which is cs The result is a new file with the given name and the extension cs 4 4 1 2 The CH Template The exported file is intended to be used together with the predefined C project that can be found in the directo
229. ty It is output such that it always produces identical results as the HDevelop code Code Export 126 Code Export 4 5 1 2 Compiling and Linking in Windows Environments The next step is to compile and link this new program In the Windows environment Visual C is used for the compiling and linking Example projects can be found in the directory ZHALCONROOT examples c If you want to use Parallel HALCON you have to include the libraries parhalcon 1lib d11 and parhalconc 1lib d11 instead of halcon 1ib d11 and halconc 1ib d11 in your project see the Programmer s Guide chapter 14 on page 107 for more details 4 5 1 3 Compiling and Linking in UNIX Environments To compile and link the new program called e g test c under UNIX you can use the example makefile which can be found in the directory HALCONROOT examples c by calling make TEST_PROG test Alternatively you can set the variable TEST_PROG in makefile to test and then just type make You can link the program to the Parallel HALCON libraries by calling make parallel TEST_PROG test or just type make parallel if you set the variable TEST_PROG as described above For more details see the Programmer s Guide chapter 14 on page 107 4 6 General Aspects of Code Generation In the following general differences in the behavior of a HDevelop program and its exported versions are described 4 6 1 User Defined Code Blocks HDevelop comments contai
230. u Procedures or by using the combo box Operator Procedure of the operator window Note that the name of an external procedure and the name of the file it is stored in are coupled Le if you change the name of the dvp file you automatically change the name of the procedure as well Since HALCON 7 1 1 you can assign passwords to your external procedures to prevent them from being viewed or modified by unauthorized users These so called protected procedures are stored also as dvp files but in a binary format As the program body of a protected procedure may not be displayed it never becomes the current procedure 2 3 Main Window On a Windows system the main window contains the other four HDevelop windows and possibly addi tional graphics windows and dialogs In contrast on a UNIX system the main window comprises the program window and the operator window The main window can handle HDevelop programs manipulate the graphics output offer all HALCON and HDevelop operators and procedures give suggestions and help on choosing operators and man age the HDevelop windows After starting HDevelop on a Windows system you will see a window configuration similar to figure 2 1 The main window comprises five areas a title bar a menu bar a tool bar a window area and a status bar In the following sections you will find all necessary information to interact with this window 2 3 1 Title Bar 15 WHDevelop OF x Fil
231. u which contains shortcuts to some of the actions of the menus Edit e g copy and paste lines and Execute e g activate and deactivate lines or set and clear break points Please note that these actions behave slightly differently than their counterparts in the main menus When called via the main menus the actions are performed only on the selected part of the program if nothing is selected no action is performed In contrast when an action is called via the context menu and no line is selected in the program the action is performed for the line onto which you clicked with the right mouse button Note that any actions that modify the position of the PC will cause the call stack to pop all procedure calls until the current procedure call remains on top This is relevant in case the current procedure call is not the top most procedure call and is necessary to secure the consistency of the call stack Modification 2 4 3 Creating and Editing Procedures 69 of the PC can happen as well directly as described above or indirectly by e g inserting a program line above the PC in the current procedure body 2 4 3 Creating and Editing Procedures HDevelop always displays one procedure the current procedure at a time The combo box Procedures on top of the program window displays the name of the current procedure and enables it to be changed directly by the user It contains a list of all HDevelop procedures in the current program with the mai
232. u may look for a detailed description of each operator in the HALCON reference manual The menu has a cascade structure according to the chapter structure of the HALCON reference manual As this menu has to be built up after opening the program window it might take some time until it is available During the build up time the menu is grayed out Selecting a chapter of the menu opens a pulldown menu with the corresponding subchapters or operators respectively This operator hierarchy is especially useful for novices because it offers all operators sorted by thematic aspects This might be interesting for an experienced user too if he wants to compare e g different smoothing filters because they reside in the same subchapter To get additional information a short description of an operator while activating its name in the menu is displayed in the status bar see figure 2 35 Note that some operators are visible in the menus but cannot be selected e g open_window in Operators gt Graphics gt Window or reset_obj_db in Operators gt System gt Database In the case of most of these operators you should use the corresponding Develop operator e g dev_open_window instead of open_window within HDevelop Some operators e g reset_obj_db cannot be called at all within HDevelop 2 3 9 Menu Suggestions This menu shows you another possibility how to select HALCON operators But here they are proposed to you in a differen
233. undefined if the second operand has a negative value or the value is larger than 32 More examples can be found in the program bit dev 3 5 7 String Operations There are several string operations available to modify select and combine strings Furthermore some operations allow to convert numbers real and integer to strings converts numbers to strings or modifies strings The operator has two parameters The first one left of the is the number that has to be converted The second one right of the specifies the conversion This format string consists of the following four parts lt flags gt lt field width gt lt precision gt lt conversion characters gt So a conversion might look like 1332 4554 6e 3 5 7 String Operations 101 v s vi v2 strchr s1 s2 strstr s1 s2 strrchr s1 s2 strrstr s1 s2 strlen s s i s i1 i2 split s1 s2 string conversion concatenation of strings and addition search character in string search substring search character in string reverse search substring reverse length of string selection of one character selection of substring splitting in substrings Table 3 11 String operations flags Zero or more flags in any order which modify the meaning of the conversion specification Flags may consist of the following characters The result of the conversion is left justified within the field The result of a signed conversion always beg
234. ure MEE Gida Operator Procedure dyn threshold Origlmage ImageFilled Thresholdimage lmageMean RegionDynThresh RegionDynThresh Offset 5 LightDark ight Y image object image object y region s object y umber rrea string CIN ee a A eto Program ioj x Procedures main bd Create Interface idev_close_window Q read_image Christof marks get_image_pointer1 Christof Pointer Type Width Height dev_open_window 0 O Width Height black VvindowID dev_set_draw fil dev_set_part 0 O Height 1 Wiath 1 til_interlace Christof imageFilled odd imean_image ImageFilled ImaceMean 29 dyn_threshold ImageFilled RegionDynThresh 5 ight Christof ImageFill ImageMe RegionDy Control Variables Pointer 24073264 Type byte Width 768 Height 575 ba indowlD 3600 dyn_threshold Segment an image using a local threshold Une E Figure 1 3 The displayed image is the threshold operation result Image pixels touching each other and remaining above the given threshold have to be merged to sin gle regions The computation of these connected components is realized by operator connection menu item Operators gt Regions gt Transformations The input region RegionDynThresh is specified in the text field Region The output variable s default name ConnectedReg
235. ures is an easy way to transfer procedures between different HDevelop programs 2 3 4 6 Edit gt Delete The menu item Edit gt Delete deletes all selected program lines without storing them in an internal buffer The only way to get the deleted lines back in your procedure body is to use the item Edit gt Undo 2 3 4 Menu Edit 27 a HDevelop clip2 dev Of x File Edit Execute Wisualization Procedures Operators Suggestions Window Help ole al Esler HHK apela gt E t tu e e Graphics Window J Program in Find Operator x Procedures main Find Operator FEY bin_threshold Clip Dark connection Dark Single select_shape Single Sele dev_set_draw fill dev_set_colored 12 m Man car _cancel_ dev_display Selected TP Find Backwards Edit ev orientation_region Selected Phi area_center Selected Area Row Column dev_set_line_wvidth 3 dev_set_draw margin Length 80 for i Oto Phil 1 by 1 olor blue disp_arrow VVindowlD Rowf i Column i Row i Length sin Phifi Column iJ Length cos Phi iD 4 set_tposition YVindowlD Rowf i Column iJ write_string VVindowlD deg Phili deg Figure 2 11 Searching for an operator 2 3 4 7 Edit gt Find Operator The menu item Edit gt Find Operator keyboard shortcut lt Ctrl gt F allows to search for the appear ance of a
236. uting a dynamic threshold dyn_threshold Using the watershed algorithms watersheds it is reasonable to apply a smoothing filter on an image first because this reduces runtime considerably 2 3 9 2 Suggestions gt Successor In many cases the task results in a natural sequence of operators Thus as a rule you use a thresholding after executing an edge filter or you execute a region processing e g morphological operators after a segmentation To facilitate a reasonable processing all the possible operators are offered in this menu item 2 3 9 3 Suggestions gt Alternatives Since HALCON includes a large library this menu item suggests alternative operators Thus you may for example replace mean_image with operators such as gauss_image sigma_image or smooth_image 2 3 9 4 Suggestions gt See also Contrary to Suggestions gt Alternatives operators are offered here which have some connection to the current operator Thus the median filter nedian_image is not a direct alternative to the mean filter mean_image Similarly the regiongrowing operator regiongrowing is no alternative for a thresholding In any case they offer another approach to solve a task References might consist of pure informative nature too the operator gen_lowpass which is used to create a lowpass filter in the frequency domain is a reasonable reference to a Gaussian filter 2 3 9 5 Suggestions gt Keywords This menu item gives access to H
237. v tuple Height Height v tuple WindowHandle VWindowHandle v tuple Enter Apply Cancel Help E gt Program lol xj Procedures main Interface Deme ota V p 4 linit_image_visualization HDevelop Procedure Opens an image in a window of appropriate size Line Figure 2 45 Operator window with a suggested call to the newly created procedure 74 Graphical User Interface GuDevelop procs_test dey 5 xi File Edit Execute Visualization Procedures Operators Suggestions Window Help Er AECE gt Be tat ll Operator Procedure init_image_visualization y Led gt program z ol x Procedures main Es Interface Demonstrate the creation of a procedure in HDevelop init_image_visualization MVTecLogo Pointer Type Width Height VindowHandle 4 init_image_visualization 0 0170s Figure 2 46 Selected program lines are replaced by a call to the newly created procedure init_image_visualization 2 4 3 3 Edit Status of External Procedures Since HALCON 7 1 1 external procedures with different edit states are provided i e you can choose between common external procedures that can be viewed and modified by all users and protected ex ternal procedures that can be applied by all users but viewed and modified only by authorized per sons who know the password The edit statu
238. velop programs to C C Visual Basic Visual Basic NET or C and also print them Figure 2 2 shows all the functions in this menu u HDevelop Ne CtrlN p Open Ctrl 0 Insert Insert Procedures Open Example Program Save CtrleS Save as Eim ile Read Image Cleanup Options Modules Quit 1 marks dev Create a new program clear the current program Figure 2 2 The menu File 2 3 3 1 File gt New The menu item File gt New keyboard shortcut lt Ctr1 gt N deletes the current program including all local procedures The contents of variables are deleted before removing them In addition all graphics win dows except one are closed The last window will be cleared The display parameters for the remaining graphics window are identical to those when starting HDevelop The first four parameters of the menu File gt Options are reset to their initial state The update of windows variables PC and time is on A security check prevents you from deleting the current program accidentally if the program has not been saved A dialog box appears and asks whether you want to save the HDevelop program before its dismissal If you choose to do so and a file name is already specified the current program is saved to that file otherwise a file selection dialog is invoked where you can determine a corresponding file You can also choose t
239. w A graphics window is used in JHDevelop for displaying Timages fregions or TXLD HDevelop is an integrated development environment IDE for the creation of HALCON applications Iconic data are image data i e image arrays and data which are described by coordinates and are derived from image arrays e g Tregions fimage and XLD Image An image consists of one or more multichannel image image arrays and a region as the def inition domain All image arrays have the same dimension but they can be of different pixel types The size of the region is smaller or equal than the size of the image arrays The fregion determines all image points that should be processed Iconic object Generic implementation of ficonic data in HALCON integer is the type name for integer numbers Integers are implemented using the C type long 4 or 8 byte 160 Glossary Operator data base The operator data base contains information about the HALCON operators They are loaded at runtime from the binary files in HALCONROOT help Program window In HDevelop the program window contains the program It is used to edit copy delete and paste lines and to run or debug the program Operator window In the operator window of HDevelop the parameters of the selected operators can be entered or modified Real is the type name for floating point numbers They are implemented using the C type double 8 bytes Region A region is a set of image points
240. which all output operations are passed In addition another subroutine is created with the name InitHalcon This subroutine applies the same initializations that HDevelop performs Most of the variables iconic as well as control are declared locally inside the corresponding subroutines Iconic variables belong to the class HUntypedObjectX and control variables belong to Object Depending on the program additional subroutines and variables are declared 4 3 2 1 Arrays If a single value is inserted into an Object array a special subroutine is called to ensure that the array is valid If the array is too small or of the wrong type it is recreated in the appropriate way 4 3 2 2 Expressions All parameter expressions inside HDevelop are translated into expressions based on the HALCON tuple operators Therefore an expression might look somewhat complex In many cases these expressions can be changed to simple Visual Basic NET expressions For example TupleSub becomes a simple subtraction To ensure that the exported program has the same effect in Visual Basic NET this exchange 1s not applied automatically because the semantics are not always identical 4 3 2 3 Stop The HDevelop operator stop is translated into a subroutine in Visual Basic NET that creates a message box This message box causes the program to halt until the button is pressed Code Export 4 3 2 4 Exit The HDevelop operator exit is translated into the Visual Ba
241. without gray values A region can be imagined as a binary image mask Regions are implemented using runlength encoding The region size is not limited to the image size see also set_system clip_region true false in the HALCON reference manual String is the type name for character strings A string starts and ends with a single quote in between any character can be used except single quote The empty string consists of two consecutive single quotes The maximum length of a character string is limited to 1024 characters Tuple A tuple is an ordered multivalue set In case of control data a tuple can consist of a large number of items with different data types The term tuple is also used in conjunction with ficonic objects if it is to be emphasized that several ficonic objects will be used Type ficonic variables can be assigned with data items of type fimage Tregion and XLD The types of control data items can be one of integer real boolean or string Variable window In HDevelop the variable window manages the control and ficonic data XLD is the short term for eXtended Line Description Itis used as a superclass for contours polygons and lines see also the HALCON Reference Manual Index 161 Index add_channels AddChannels 35 39 145 anisometry 42 anisometry Anisometry 42 area_center AreaCenter 40 90 147 assign Assign 53 95 97 bin_threshold BinThreshold 136 Boolean 159
242. wo other possibilities the parameters of operator read_image are specified auto matically Thus an explicit input of path and file name is not necessary in this case An icon with an appropriate variable name is created in the iconic variable area of the variable window Double clicking on such an icon displays its contents in the currently active graphics window Figure 1 1 shows a com plete configuration of HDevelop for the explained scenario In addition a new window is opened after closing the default window to display the image in its original size The necessary settings for the operating system are described in the Installation Guide section A 2 on page 52 1 4 Example Session File Edit Execute Visualization Procedures Operators Suggestions Window Help ojal ajejo Haak pele es le Me FET Z operator Procedure MEE _ ow Active E operator sProcedure read image lt Image Christof T image object FileName marks Z filename string Coo ete a cna ter Program ioj xi Procedures main bd Create Interface get image_pointer1 Christof Pointer Type Width Height dev_open_window 0 0 Width Height black Window iD Control Variables Pointer 24073264 Type byte Width 768 Height 575 WindowlD 3600 7 Line 2 Figure 1 1 Screen configuration after image loading If you take
243. xample program in the right list displays a short information in HDevelop s status bar while double clicking or clicking OK will load the selected program and close the dialog An HDevelop example program can appear under different topics and categories Wopen Example Program al x Topic Category Examples Industry General 1D bar codes Method 2D data codes Color inspection Completeness check Inspection Measuring and comparison 2D Measuring and comparison 3D Optical character recognition Optical character verification Position recognition gen_training_file dev letter dev letters_mip dev lettert dev Print inspection ocrcolor_tfiles dev Recognition of objects ocrcolort dey Shape recognition partition_dynamic dev Surface inspection Y partition_rectangle dev ha Figure 2 4 HDevelop example programs grouped by topics and categories 2 3 3 5 File bp Save The menu item File gt Save keyboard shortcut lt Ctr1 gt S saves the current program to a file If no file name has been specified so far the dialog corresponding to File gt Save As will be activated Local procedures are saved with the HDevelop program External procedures are saved automatically after being modified in the path specified during their creation 2 3 3 Menu File 19 2 3 3 6 Filep Save As The menu item File gt Save As saves the current program to a file The type of file HDevelop text C C Visual Basic Visual Basic NET
244. xecution of an operator By default the update is deactivated for the boxes Lut and Paint You may specify the following parameter settings Paint Here you can select between several graphical presentations for images Examples are contourline and 3D plot In the default mode the image will be displayed as a picture see figure 2 23 If you have chosen a presentation mode the window displays all possible parameters you may modify For example after selecting the item 3D plot you have to specify the following parame ters e Step the distance of plot lines in pixels 2 3 6 Menu Visualization 45 Pen Visualization Parameters x Lut Paint Pen Zoom Draw C fill margin Shape original v Line width fr medium slate blue coral Example Figure 2 24 Settings of parameter pen e Colored use the gray value of a pixel to draw a line segment instead of one graphic color e Eye height e Eye distance view point e Scale height of 3D plot e Rowand e Column position of the center Here the display modes display for regions and XLDs are specified You can select the color single or multiple the drawing mode filled or border the line width and the shape of the regions You can select up to 12 colors by clicking the appropriate checkbox They are used to empha size the connectivity of different regions in the graphics window If you
245. xture energy figure 5 4 left Figure 5 4 Capillary vessel texture energy left and segmentation right The filter mask is chosen very large within this program The mask size for the horizontal direction is 211 and 61 for the vertical direction The asymmetry is used because the vessel is nested in horizontal 136 Program Examples direction From this you obtain an image with an upper and lower part that is brighter than that in the middle read_image Image vessel texture_laws Image Texture el 5 5 mean_image Texture Energy 211 61 bin_threshold Energy Vessel To separate these areas you just have to find the appropriate threshold In this case we have only two types of textures the threshold can be found automatically This is done by the operator bin_threshold which also applies the resulting threshold and thus extracts the vessel The right side of figure 5 4 shows the result of the segmentation 5 3 Particles File name particle dev This program example processes an image that was taken from a medical application It shows tissue particles on a carrier figure 5 5 left P gt Figure 5 5 Tissue particles left and large objects right As in many other medical applications the existing objects have to be evaluated statistically This means that different objects have to be extracted and classified according to their size or other attributes for example After this you c
246. y Catalog dev_set_draw margin dev_set_line_width 3 disp_rectangle1 WindowID Row1 Columni Row2 Column2 Figure 5 2 shows the segmentation result Due to the unknown operators and unfamiliar syntax this program appears unclear to the user at first glance But if you look closer at the operators you will notice the direct relation to the description above threshold selects all image pixels darker than the paper connection merges all selected pixels touching each other to connected regions select_shape selects the regions with areas attribute area inside a specified interval smallest_rectanglei computes each region s coordinates row column of the enclosing rectangle Once the user is familiar with the single operators and their syntax the transformation becomes easy In particular it is not important to the program whether an image or a set of regions is processed You can handle them both in the same way In addition the memory management of internal data structures is transparent to the user Thus you do not need to bother about memory management and you can concentrate on the image analysis tasks to solve 5 2 Capillary Vessel File name vessel dev The task of this example is the segmentation of a capillary vessel In particular you have to separate the cell area in the upper and lower part of figure 5 3 left image from the area in the middle of the image 134 Program Examples 2 50
247. y to Operators gt Filter gt Smoothing It will be displayed in the operator window immediately Now you specify the image variable names ImageFilled in the text field called Image and ImageMean in the output text field The filter matrix size is chosen by opening the combo boxes of the corresponding text fields MaskWidth MaskHeight These combo boxes contain a selection of reasonable input values which is offered by HDevelop In our example the size is set to 29 see figure 1 2 1 4 Example Session By clicking the button OK you insert the operator mean_image in the program and execute it Now you have to search for the name of the dynamic thresholding For this you specify a substring that is included in the operator name in the operator window s operator name text field Three letters are already sufficient to produce a result You will notice the open combo box that presents all HALCON and or HDevelop operators containing the first three specified letters Now you are able to select the operator dyn_threshold and to specify its input parameters The value ImageFilled is used for OriginalImage ImageMean is used as the component to compare here ThresholdImage For the output parameter RegionDynThresh the variable name remains unchanged see figure 1 3 HDevelop marks dev Pal ES File Edit Execute Visualization Procedures Operators Suggestions Window Help oella smaa el hel he Pah bale Eue RTE ASE All Operator Proced

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