2/24/2003 Burkhard Wünsche – Introduction to MS Visual C/C++ under .NET Page 1 of 14
Introduction to MS Visual C/C++ under .NET
0. Introduction:
Part 1 of this tutorial gives a simple introduction to MS Visual Studio .NET with an emphasis on OpenGL
graphics application. Part 2 introduces the basics of C/C++. At the end of this tutorial you should be able to
write a simple console application using the graphics libraries OpenGL, GLU, and GLUT. The tutorial
gives an introduction to the C/C++ programming language but does not attempt to explain the above
mentioned graphics libraries (which is done in the 372 lecture). Please note that these notes only introduce
a very limited subset of the C/C++ language and you are expected to consult the 372 Resources web page
for more information. Finally please remember that ‘learning by doing’ is the best recipe for mastering
C/C++. I recommend that you do all examples on a computer. Also it is a good idea to experiment with the
code (e.g. change parameters) and to introduce intentionally little syntax errors into the example programs
in order to get familiar with the resulting error messages (if any) from the compiler.
1. Getting started with Microsoft Visual Studio .NET:
1.1. Creating a Solution
The first step to doing anything in VS.NET is creating a solution. A VS.NET solution can be made up of a
number of different projects. In order to create a solution we start VS.NET and choose ‘New’, ‘Blank
Solution’ in the ‘File’ menu. In the resulting pop-up menu click on the ‘Visual Studio Solutions’ folder and
the item ‘Blank Solution’. In this example we name the solution ‘Ass1’ and specify where it should be
stored, as shown in the figure below.
Figure 1 - Creating a blank solution
