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Linking RealDWG SDK C++ rcexelib.obj in Visual Studio Debug mode

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by Fenton Webb

If you are building a RealDWG application using the C++ API then you will have to link your application with the RealDWG SDK rcexelib.obj so that your application will run.

The thing is with all Autodesk products, we give them to you compiled in Visual Studio ‘Release’ mode, not in ‘Debug’ mode therefore you have to be careful when trying to run in Debug mode.

The reason you have to be careful is because the default Visual Studio project setup for a Debug project is that it:

  1. Defines _DEBUG preprocessor
  2. Sets the Runtime Library as Multithreaded Debug DLL

If you try and build your RealDWG application in Debug mode with these settings, the linker will have some issues because the RealDWG SDK that you are linking to is built with the NDEBUG preprocessor symbol and Multithreaded DLL. This conflict will either give errors/warnings when building and ultimately crash your application when run.

Therefore, to get your RealDWG to build properly in debug mode, you need to make sure you have _DEBUG not set and also make sure you have Multithreaded DLL set as the Runtime Library…

Comments

8 responses to “Linking RealDWG SDK C++ rcexelib.obj in Visual Studio Debug mode”

  1. Alan Anderson Avatar
    Alan Anderson

    Fenton, this really doesn’t work either, because if you have an application with many libs/dlls, then the removal of debug from this one project requires removal of debug from all projects or you will have the same problem with the mismatch of the _ITERATOR_DEBUG_LEVEL for example:
    vpcacad.obj : error LNK2038: mismatch detected for ‘_ITERATOR_DEBUG_LEVEL’: value ‘2’ doesn’t match value ‘0’ in rcexelib.obj
    This worked in the past without having the issue, something has changed, and frankly I haven’t got it to work as of yet.
    Alan Anderson
    Manager Engineering Systems
    BlueScope Buildings NA

    Reply
  2. Fenton Webb Avatar
    Fenton Webb

    Hey Alan
    Best thing is to load the RealDWG C++ sample ‘DumpDWG’ and copy the Visual Studio projects settings from that to your own project settings.

    Reply
  3. Alan Anderson Avatar
    Alan Anderson

    DumpDWG is failing in acdbValidateSetup(lcid), so now I’m back to a setup problem with RealDWG 2013.
    Ideas?

    Reply
  4. dougal.harris@gmail.com Avatar
    dougal.harris@gmail.com

    Hi Alan,
    Did you ever get this to the bottom of this? I am running into exactly the same problem, ie my application has many libs/dlls, the removal of debug from this one project requires removal of debug from all projects in the solution otherwise I get the same problem with the mismatch of the _ITERATOR_DEBUG_LEVEL.
    Any help is solving this would be greatly appreciated.
    Cheers,
    Dougal

    Reply
  5. hernyo Avatar
    hernyo

    Hi Dougal,
    did you manage to sort this out? I’m struggling with the same problem.
    Thanks – Laszlo.

    Reply
  6. Fenton Webb Avatar
    Fenton Webb

    Hey guys
    The setup issue is most likely due to the fact that the RealDWG app is not deployed correctly. You need to follow the Redistributable Requirements detailed in readdbx.chm. Failing that, the easiest way to make it work is to output your RealDWG exe to the RealDWG base SDK folder where all of the dependency dlls reside.

    Reply
  7. Sander Avatar
    Sander

    The newest visual studios introduce the _ITERATOR_DEBUG_LEVEL problems. That is mixing debug and release libs are detected by the compiler and flatly refused.
    Removing _DEBUG from a projects requires the removal of _DEBUG from all the projects.
    In an application with many libs/dlls you will see these problems.
    I have some other third party libs and they require _DEBUG for debugging purposes. (Also getting into Microsoft libs requires _DEBUG.) Removing this is not really an option.
    The best option would be for autodesk to also distribute the debug libs with RealDWG.
    Otherwise I hope there is someone who knows how to deal with this?

    Reply
  8. Fenton Webb Avatar
    Fenton Webb

    Hi guys
    The RealDWG is compiled in release mode, therefore, compiling in Debug mode means that you have to link with Multithreaded DLL not Debug Multithreaded DLL.
    Also, you should wrap your stdafx.h in this #ifdef (below) because simply including the afx headers with pragma import the debug libs which you don’t want
    We don’t build an externally available Debug build of RealDWG, sorry about that.
    #ifdef _DEBUG
    #ifndef FULL_DEBUG
    #define MY_WAS_DEBUG
    #undef _DEBUG
    #endif
    #endif
    // now include all MFC, CRT, STL headers
    #ifdef MY_WAS_DEBUG
    #define _DEBUG
    #endif

    Reply

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