Every time I try to run “start debugging” in Visual Studio (using what, as far as I can tell, is the proper configuration for a “hybrid” debug build for the Max SDK), I get this error:
No Debugging Information
Debugging information for ‘3dsmax.exe’ cannot be found or does not match. Cannot find or open the PDB file
Do you want to continue debugging?
What is especially irritating is that I am nearly positive that I had this working at one point. But then I moved a file, and even after I moved it back where it was, it was broken again.
Can someone tell me what settings I need to configure in Visual Studio to make this work properly?
And if you answer “yes” to continue… doesn’t it proceed with loading 3dsMax?
Yes it does… and I was going to say “but my breakpoints aren’t working”, but when I tried it again just now, they seem to be working fine after all. Not sure if I had something else set up improperly before, or if I was just missing the output amidst all the “The thread ‘Win64 Thread’ (0x1418) has exited with code 0 (0x0).” messages.
Depending on what you’re doing inside 3ds Max during the debug session, you may not hit one of your breakpoints– unless you do something inside 3dsMax that you know is suppose to trigger it.
That warning about not finding the 3dsMax debug PDB is because you’re not running the special-compiled Debug version of 3ds Max– rather you are running the “Release” version. Compiling a Hybrid plugin allows you to debug your own plugin code… and sometimes it’ll want to go into Disassembly Code when your plugin calls other SDK methods you’ve included… when that happens you just have to keeping stepping thru or out of the code until it gets back to your plugin code and frees up 3ds Max for further user input.
There should be a checkbox to turn off that nuisance warning about the missing PDB when you launch a debug session.
“best” way to debug is NOT to start a debugsession with F5 inside VC
compile your hybrid version
start max normaly (NOT F5)
in VC hit Ctrl+ALT+P (that is attach to process) attach to 3dmax using “natice Code” for Attach to (you can do this while max is starting, no need to wait)
normal startup time here is 30 sec
when using F5 to debug it takes 2 minutes
sometimes i forgot until then what i wanted to debug
once native code is set all there is to do to start a debug session
- start max
- hit CTRL#ALT+F5 and ENTER
saved me lots of time…
and max itself runs faster