How to debug a 3ds Max plugin?

[Sniffman]

I am currently writing a 3ds Max modifier plugin. Something is not going well at all, so it would come in handy now if I could use breakpoints or use the DebugPrint of 3ds Max to write output into Visual Studio's output field. So I've been trying to debug my plugin.

The 3ds Max plugin creation wizard automatically creates a Hybrid mode for you that will allow you to have Debug information in your dll while running Max itself as a Release exe, of course. But, when started via F5, as soon as Max has finished loading all it's dlls, a window pops up saying "Debugger detected - please close it down and restart!".

Now, that's some pretty bad joke. I won't be able to complete my project without debugging functionality, but it looks like Max doesn't want my plugin to be run in Debug mode.

Is there anyone here with some experience in this field? What's the problem?

[jff_f]

In the past I had to debug a 3DS Max plug-in... but I think we had a special debug version of Max... but I'm not sure.

Otherwise, I don't have Max to test this, but can't you just link the debugger to the max instance once everything is loaded? That you you might be able to attach the debugger and break in your plug-in.

[Sniffman]

That was my first approach as well. But Visual Studio then tells me it won't be able to stop at any breakpoints in my dll, because no symbols were loaded for it.

By the way: Do you know any good forum about 3ds max programming. I always find it very hard to get advice when a problem is not in the SDK help.