The looksoftware SDK is a packaged solution containing a large selection of samples showcasing commonly used and requested functionality.

These samples can be reused as-is or as starting points for your own projects.

Figure 1 – Viewing the available samples

Obtaining the SDK

Once you have the IDE (newlook or soarchitect) already installed you can simply download the SDK from the following link:

http://www.looksoftware.com/Portals/0/looksoftware/repository/zip/newlookSDK9.zip

Once you have the ZIP file simply extract it directly into the solutions folder. For version 10 this will be c:\programData\looksoftware 10.0.

For version 9 this can be extracted into the same folder that your IDE program files are installed e.g. c:\looksoftware 9.0.

Launching the SDK

From within the IDE simply select File | Open Solution and browse to the newlookSDK folder and select newlookSDK.ini (refer to Figure 2)

Figure 2 – opening the SDK solution

Once you have selected the newlookSDK solution you can then run or debug the solution to view the SDK samples from within the IDE runtime as shown in Figure 1.

Using the SDK

All of the samples are grouped into categories based on the functionality utilized within the sample. For example, integrating to MS office applications are grouped under ActiveX/COM
| Microsoft Office Automation

To view a sample in action you can double click on the sample in the Tree View and it will launch a new smartclient window allowing you to interact with the sample.

Single clicking on each item will bring up a short description of the example and will also provide the path to the solution files so you can then separately browse to the solution file and examine it in detail.

Keep in mind that you can have multiple IDE sessions running so you can view the SDK, have your solution open and then open individual samples and easily copy between sessions in addition to merging the samples across.

Figure 3 – Using the SDK

If you can’t locate an example by browsing the SDK you can click on the Search button at the top right of the form which will allow you to enter a keyword to search for. Figure 4 shows a search on Excel.

Figure 4 – Using the search function

Summary

The SDK provides some powerful and useful examples that can help you get the most out of your development tools. If you don’t find a sample you are looking for be sure to ask the looksoftware Support team at support@looksoftware.com or post a question to the looksoftware community forums here : http://www.looksoftware.com/customer-area/forum.aspx