Specifying Library Files for the Project

The library (LIB) files required varies depending on the type of plug-in that is being created. The document Library File Descriptions lists the library files and their uses. Most plug-ins will require the maxutil.lib and core.lib 3ds Max library files.

Enter the path of the "lib" folder in your SDK installation using the correct environment variables. For example $(3DSMAX_2011_SDK_PATH)\maxsdk\lib.

Under Additional Dependencies maxutil.lib, core.lib and any other needed libraries.

In some cases it may be difficult to decipher which library to link against. In cases like this, you can use the dumpbin utility that comes with Visual Studio to help find which library file contains the implementation for a given entity in the SDK. For instance you can call the following commands from the visual studio command prompt. For instance to find the library that defines ParamBlockDesc, use:

for %i in (*.lib) do dumpbin /exports %i | findstr ParamBlockDesc

In this case you will find that core.lib exports a few helper functions with the name ParamBlockDesc. But you will find that paramblk2.lib exports many more methods dealing with ParamBlockDesc.