Easy-to-Use Tool Enables the Development of Graphical User Interfaces and Saves Valuable Design Time.
Microchip Technology announced the release of Graphics Display Designer X (GDD X), Microchip’s enhanced visual design tool that provides a quick and easy way of creating Graphical User Interface (GUI) screens for applications using Microchip’s 16-or 32-bit PIC MCUs. With GDD X, developers have the freedom to work in the environment of their choice, including Windows, Linux or Mac OS operating systems.
Graphical user interfaces are found in a wide range of products today; from coffeemakers to automotive dashboards. While the requirement is becoming commonplace, there is a lack of cost effective tools available to the developer. Placing dialog boxes, guidance text, buttons, sliders and other elements of your GUI while determining colors and calculating x/y coordinates can be very time consuming. GDD X enables the development of GUIs in a “What You See Is What You Get” (WYSIWYG) environment, and saves valuable design time by automatically generating the C code needed for the user interface. With GDD X, a highly effective GUI can be created to improve the customer experience for applications in the automotive, industrial, home-appliance; consumer-electronics and medical markets.
GDD X enables development using Microchip’s Graphics Library, and can be used as a stand-alone tool or as a plug-in to Microchip’s free MPLAB X Integrated Development Environment (IDE). It allows the creation of a project with configurable display resolution, and imports all the required driver/board support files into MPLAB X. Generated code can be compiled and tested on hardware. Key improvements to the original GDD include: thumbnail view of screens and snap-to-grid feature, cut/copy/paste, auto object align, and event handling.
Pricing & Availability
The GDD X is available today via a free download from http://www.microchip.com/get/85U9.
