ComponentOne Studio Visual Studio Utilities
When you install any of the ComponentOne Studio packages it will also add some utilities to your Visual Studio “Tools” tab. These utilities include activating/deactivating licenses, checking what licenses are currently on your machine, creating run-time licenses for certain project types, the Samples Explorer, and updating projects.
Table of Contents
- Activating and Deactivating Licenses
- Viewing Samples
- Updating Projects
- Updating References
- Updating Licenses
Activating and Deactivating Licenses
Activate
Start by opening Tools > GrapeCity > GrapeCity License Manager.
From there, select Activate License. This just runs the C1LicenseActivation.exe. Give it a few seconds for the exe to start running. Now, you can enter your name, the company you work for, and your serial number. If you are on a machine with internet access, select the “Automatically over the internet option.”
“From our web site” will give you a link to the activation utility on our website. This will allow you to open the site on another machine (such as your smartphone) to enter the Serial Number and Authentication Number. After entering those you will receive an Activation Code to enter on the machine you are trying to activate. This is by far the fastest way to do an offline activation, so I recommend this option if possible.
If your network restrictions are too strict to let you access our website, you can select the “By e-mail” option which will give you an email address to email your Serial Number and Authentication Number to. When one of our engineers sees the email come in they will process the activation for you and respond with an Activation Code. If you cannot send emails to external email addresses, you can use the “Over the phone” option.
You will receive a phone number to call then if one of our engineers is available you can read the Serial Number and Authentication number over the phone and the engineer will read off an Activation Code for you. After activating you will be asked if you want to register your license. Registering the license associates the key with your GrapeCity.com account and allows you to find installers for the versions you are licensed for under the “My Licenses” section.
Deactivate
Start by opening Tools > GrapeCity > GrapeCity License Manager.
From there, select Deactivate License. This just runs the C1LicenseActivation.exe with a deactivate command, so give it a few seconds for the exe to start running. Now you can enter your name, the company you work for, and your serial number. If this does not work, it is most likely because the utility couldn’t reach our servers due to network restrictions. If this happens to send an email over to us.activate@grapecity.com and one of our engineers will manually deactivate it for you.
Checking Installed Licenses
Start by opening Tools > GrapeCity > GrapeCity License Manager.
Next, simply select “View Installed Licenses” and the utility will display any active Serial Numbers with their License Type and Valid Till date.
Creating Run-time Licenses
This utility is only necessary for certain platforms that require run-time licensing such as Xamarin or ASP.NET Core MVC.
Start by opening Tools > GrapeCity > GrapeCity License Manager.
Next, select “Create RunTime License.” In the drop-down box select your Serial Number or select “Eval” if you are doing a free trial. Check the boxes next to the projects in your solution, then click “Generate”. Run-time licenses for all the selected projects in your solution will be automatically generated and added to the projects.
This will have added a new file called GCDTlicenses.xml to your project that contains your run-time license.
Keep in mind that run-time licenses are linked to the name of the project so you will not be able to re-use this key for other projects, and if you change the name of your project you will need to replace the regenerate the run-time license.
If your dev machine is offline or you can’t access the service via the GrapeCity License Manager due to proxy or firewall issues, you can generate keys via our website here.
Viewing Samples
Simply open Tools > GrapeCity > Samples Explorer
This will open the ComponentOne Studio Samples Explorer and you can browse around through the samples for each platform to find what you are looking for.
Updating Projects
Updating Licenses.licx
This utility will automatically remove any version-specific information from the ComponentOne Studio entries in your licenses.licx file and add any potentially missing entries based on the DLLs referenced in your project. This is useful when you are getting a nag screen even though you have a license activated on your machine. These nag screens usually occur because an entry is missing from the licenses.licx and this utility will fix that. It is also useful when you update the controls in your project because the default entries that Visual Studio adds when you drag a control onto a form in certain platforms such as WinForms or WPF contain version-specific information.
If you update the controls, that version-specific information will no longer line up with the DLLs you are using, and you will receive nag screens. This utility will remove that information as it is not necessary for our licensing to work.
Start by opening Tools > GrapeCity > Update Projects > Add missing entries to licx file.
From there, check the box next to each project you want to update and click “Update.”
Updating References
This utility will automatically remove any version-specific information from your ComponentOne Studio references and change the “Specific Version” property to “False.” This will allow Visual Studio to use any version of the DLL with the name referenced that it can find in the directory referenced. This is useful for updating our controls because our DLLs always have the same file name. If you update your controls, it replaces the DLLs with the newer ones.
If you don’t remove the version-specific information in your references Visual Studio will complain that it can’t find your references. Without those restrictions, it will find the new ones with no problem as long as you install them in the same directory.
Start by opening Tools > GrapeCity > Update Projects > Make ComponentOne References non-version specific.
From there, check the box next to each project you want to update and click “Update.”
Alec Gall