Customize Visual Studio Using Arduino Macros

by Visual Micro 19. October 2012 13:48

The Arduino plugin for Visual Studio automatically creates a Visual Studio macro for every Arduino command. This enables us to add Arduino commands to menus and tool bars. It also allows us to assign shortbut keys to all of the Arduino commands.

Clicking "Customize>Add Command>Addins" on any Visual Studio tool bar or within the menus provides a list of "Visual.Micro" commands as shown below

The following image shows a button that, when clicked, quickly selects a specific Arduino board. In this case a custom board is being selected hence the strange name.

Warning: On rare occassions Visual Studio becomes confused and which causes visual micro menus and tool bar controls to disappear. The documented solution for this problem is to use the visual studio resetaddin command. Running this command will remove any customizations you have made that reference visual.micro macros. I am not currently sure if it is possible to backup your customizations of the visual studio ide. The safest way to work might be to create a visual studio macro that creates the arduino buttons, shortcuts and menus based on visual micro micros. Doing so allows you to re-run your macro and re-create your customizations at any time in the future.

Automate the Arduino IDE for Visual Studio Interface

by Visual Micro 19. September 2012 15:22

We can build our own tool bar layouts or add shortcuts to frequently used Arduino commands to the Visual Studio user interface.

How To

Right click any Visual Studio tool strip and select "Customize" which will on the bottom of the right mouse menu.

When the Customize window opens (see below), click keyboard to assign shortcut keys. Click the  "Commands" tab to add commands to menus and tool bars.

When adding a command or shortcut the Visual Micro commands will be displayed under the "Addins" section 

Below you can see the possibility to add Arduino commands such as board selection to the "File" menu.

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Warning: On rare occassions Visual Studio becomes confused and which causes visual micro menus and tool bar controls to disappear. The documented solution for this problem is to use the visual studio resetaddin command. Running this command will remove any customizations you have made that reference visual.micro macros. I am not currently sure if it is possible to backup your customizations of the visual studio ide. The safest way to work might be to create a visual studio macro that creates the arduino buttons, shortcuts and menus based on visual micro micros. Doing so allows you to re-run your macro and re-create your customizations at any time in the future.