ADC Home > Reference Library > Technical Q&As > Legacy Documents > Graphics & Imaging >

Legacy Documentclose button

Important: This document is part of the Legacy section of the ADC Reference Library. This information should not be used for new development.

Current information on this Reference Library topic can be found here:

NOTE: This Technical Q&A has been retired. Please see the Technical Q&As page for current documentation.

DONT_NEED_DDRAW Preprocessor Explained

Q: I'm trying to build the Win32 sample from the QuickDraw 3D SDK using the MSVC++ 4.0 build environment. However, I keep getting the error: "can't find interface file ddraw.h". What's going on?

A: You'll need to include the interface file "ddraw.h" in your build if you code makes use of the Q3DDSurfaceDrawContext_XXX routines. If you don't need Q3DDSurfaceDrawContext_XXX support in your application, define the preprocessor DONT_NEED_DDRAW in your application and the interface file "ddraw.h" won't be included in your build. An easy way to do this in MSVC++ 4.2 for a project is to go into the "Project Settings" window for the project (under the "Build" window, choose the "Settings" menu item), and in the "Preprocessor definitions" edit box add a definition for the preprocessor DONT_NEED_DDRAW.

However, if you do need Q3DDSurfaceDrawContext support in your application you'll need to actually get the "ddraw.h" interface file. This file can be found in MSVC++ 4.2, the Windows 32 SDK, or the Windows Game SDK.

[Jul 11 1997]

Did this document help you?
Yes: Tell us what works for you.
It’s good, but: Report typos, inaccuracies, and so forth.
It wasn’t helpful: Tell us what would have helped.