Microscan Visionscape FrontRunner, User Manual

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v4.1.3, April 2012 Visionscape FrontRunner™ User’s Manual 1-1
1
V
isionscap
e®
Overview
1
CHAPTER 1
Visionscape
®
Overview
This chapter covers the basic Visionscape
®
concepts in terms of the
hardware and vision application development.
Introduction
At its highest level, Visionscape is a set of software and hardware that
allows you to create and operate machine vision applications without
having to consider the details of data connection and information flows in
the software or how the underlying hardware is configured.
All Visionscape applications, commonly referred to as “Jobs,” have the
following components and characteristics:
• A Machine Vision Program — Commonly referred to as an “AVP” or
“Job”. A Job is a collection of Visionscape
®
steps.
• Visionscape Steps — Steps are completely encapsulated machine
vision operations and tools. Steps pass information to each other and
take care of all hardware and memory management. A Visionscape
®
Job is a tree of steps. The order of the tree defines the order of
execution and flow of data.
• A Vision System Step is present at the top of each Job. The Vision
System Step represents the hardware on which the Job is to run -
either a Smart Camera, a Vision System comprised of GigE
Cameras, or a software system.