Skip to content

Release Notes for HDevelopEVO 26.05🔗

HDevelopEVO 26.05 was released in May 2026.

More Info

You find the release notes for HALCON 26.05 on the MVTec website .

Major new features of HDevelopEVO 26.05🔗

.NET interface for the HALCON Script Engine🔗

HDevelopEVO 26.05 introduces a .NET interface for the HALCON Script Engine, enabling HALCON scripts to run directly inside .NET applications. Scripts created and tested in HDevelopEVO can be embedded and executed from C# applications without rewriting algorithms. Developers integrate vision logic directly into .NET projects, keeping their existing toolchain intact.

This enables a consistent workflow from prototyping to production: Vision applications can be developed in HDevelopEVO and deployed directly in .NET systems, reducing integration effort and accelerating the transition from prototype to productive machine vision solutions.

HDevelopEVO 26.05 introduces the HALCONSearch Agent, an AI-powered search that helps users identify suitable HALCON operators, procedures, and example scripts for a specific machine vision task.

Users describe their problem in natural language. The agent retrieves matching operators, procedures, and example scripts from the HALCON library, ranked by an AI-based confidence score. Matching example scripts can be displayed directly in the AI Views panel for immediate inspection. This replaces manual library exploration with task-oriented search, letting developers identify relevant operators faster and start from existing examples to accelerate prototyping. Debugging, analysis, and documentation tasks become faster because the assistant works with the same visual data as the developer.

Context-aware documentation in the editor🔗

HDevelopEVO 26.05 introduces inline hover documentation, displaying relevant metadata directly in the editor without switching tabs.

Hovering over an import statement shows the documentation of the referenced file. Hovering over a procedure call reveals the procedure description, while parameter information appears automatically during parameterization. This is especially useful in larger projects with many modules and procedures. Developers understand unfamiliar code faster and configure procedure calls with fewer errors.

Visual prompting for AI assistants🔗

HDevelopEVO 26.05 expands multimodal LLM support with visual prompting. Developers can now include image data directly in prompts sent to the AI assistant.

Images from the Iconic Variable View, Graphics Windows, or selected variables can be passed directly to the model. This eliminates the need to describe visual data in text. The assistant analyzes image and prompt together, enabling more relevant responses. Debugging, analysis, and documentation tasks become faster because the assistant works with the same visual data as the developer.

Changelog🔗

New functionality for the IDE🔗

  • The display and layout of the quick help, shown when hovering over a procedure or operator, has been further improved.
  • Pressing Enter after control statements (if, while, for, switch, try, repeat, proc) now automatically inserts the matching end* statement and places the cursor, correctly indented, in between.
  • It is now possible to document an HSCRIPT file. The documentation is used when hovering over an import statement, for example. More will follow.
    The information in the file documentation is also accessible via the API of the HALCON Script Engine.
  • It is now possible to add documentation to procedures.
    This information is used during hovering over a procedure call, during autocompletion, and more. The information in the procedure documentation is also accessible via the API of the HALCON Script Engine.
  • Debug variables in the Debug and the Iconic Variable view can now be sorted by usage or alphabetically. This can be configured in the settings using the keys “Debug: Iconic Variable View Sort Order” and “Debug: Variable View Sort Order”.
  • The support for multimodal language models has been improved with the introduction of Visual Prompting:
    • Use images from the Workspace by drag and drop them to the AI Chat.
    • Add image‑type variables from the Iconic Variable view directly to your prompt.
    • Images can be attached
      • by selecting the appropriate variable
      • by searching for an image from the workspace
    • Open images can be attached.
    • It is now possible to attach the content of a Graphics window to the prompt.
  • The autocompletion in HSCRIPT files now suggests folders and files in import statements.
  • HDevelopEVO introduces the HALCONSearch Agent.
    It allows you to search HALCON operators and example applications based on the task you want to solve, making it easier to discover the right tools and kick‑start your solution.

New functionality for the HALCON Script Engine🔗

  • It is now possible to add documentation to procedures.
    This information is used during hovering over a procedure call, during autocompletion, and more. The information in the procedure documentation is also accessible via the API of the HALCON Script Engine.
  • The preview of the new HALCON Script Engine for HDevelopEVO is now also available for .NET.
    The new .NET API is provided as a new NuGet package MVTec.HScriptEngine. This package targets .NET Standard 2.0 and as such can be used with .NET Core 3.1 and later on Windows and Linux, as well as .NET Framework 4.7.1 and later on Windows.
    A local installation of HALCON including HDevelopEVO is needed to use the packages.
    A C# example is provided under examples/hscriptengine/c#.

Bug fixes for the IDE🔗

  • The workspace search only listed results from open files. The problem has been fixed. Now, results from all files in the workspace are listed.
  • Autocompletion for operators has been improved. Now, there are two variants for the completion of all parameters of an operator: one using variables from the context and one using placeholders.
  • The menu entry ‘New HALCON Script File’ and the associated shortcut CTRL+N were missing on the File menu. This problem has been fixed.
  • In some cases, the program counter jumped to the last code line during “edit & continue” actions. This problem has been fixed.
  • When clicking the Insert button in the Gray Value Histogram window, users are now notified that the threshold operator code line will be copied to clipboard if the editor is not visible. If the editor is visible, then the code will be inserted at the cursor position.
  • Errors that occurred in a file were still shown after closing it or opening other files. This problem has been fixed.
  • When starting HDevelopEVO, the output console was opened every time. This problem has been fixed.
  • When invoking “Run file” the execution stopped at the start of the script. This problem has been fixed. Now, the execution runs until the end of the script.

New documentation functionality🔗

  • The HDevelopEVO documentation has been improved:
    • Previously, the navigation tree also contained the table of contents for each page. Now, they are separate. The table of contents for each page is now shown on the right, making the navigation tree much more concise.
    • The operator reference is now better integrated and easier to navigate. Further, it now shows the operator signatures for HDevelopEVO (HALCON Script) instead of HDevelop.
    • The search now lets you load more search results and provides better suggestions. In particular, you can search for operators using any of the available interface notations.

Documentation bug fixes🔗

  • The documentation still mentioned topics that were relevant for HDevelop, but not for HDevelopEVO. This problem has been fixed.