Visual Assist: Eliminate frustration with intelligent coding assistance in Visual Studio for C/C++ and C# Developers

Visual Assist is a productivity extension for Visual Studio development work. It provides a set of contextual and timely refactoring, navigation, code highlighting and generation features for C, C++, and C# development.

Visual Assist is one of the definitive plugins that conceptualized and shaped most of the current features you see now in Visual Studio. And to this day it continues to develop user-centric design for maximum productivity and usability.

Read more about the features and benefits provided by Visual Assist.

Benefits of using Visual Assist

• Do more with fewer clicks. Visual Assist expands your available options with intuitive navigation, refactoring, and automatic suggestions wherever you are in your code.

• Increase productivity with uninterrupted work. The parser efficiently supports your workflow. Loading times and memory usage has been significantly optimized so you can work continuously.

• Specialized support for Unreal Engine projects. The plugin has been designed with Unreal development in mind. UE’s syntax and macros are no problem with VAX.

• No more frustrating errors and tedious debugging. Visual Assist suggests code corrections in real time and provides numerous code inspections and refactoring features, greatly reducing time spent fixing errors.

What's new

Visual Assist 2024 expands on the plugin's core functionality and language support. Recent updates take advantage of the exceptional performance gains from unlocked bandwidth from the monumental Visual Studio 2022 update.

Learn more about the latest changes in Visual Assist here.

• Faster Find References Find usages of the current symbol within the current project or solution in significantly shorter time. As of VA 2024.5, finding references has been sped up by up to eight times faster than native Visual Studio.

• Native ARM CPU support Use Visual Assist on Windows on ARM, including in VMs on Apple Silicon, on Surface or Snapdragon devices, and more.

• Significantly faster initial parsing Open and load new projects in a fraction of the time. Visual Assist 2024 boasts a significantly better parsing time of up to 15 times faster (vs older versions of VA).

• 100+ New code inspection checks and updated LLVM Clang Tidy engine Modernize and fix code issues en masse with over a hundred new code inspections based on Clang Tidy. See full list of code inspections. VA now runs on LLVM/Clang version 15.0 engine.

• Unreal Engine 5 support Unreal Engine 5 is fully supported by Visual Assist. Leverage UE-specific features to navigate, maintain, and refactor huge Unreal Engine solutions.

• Unity Engine support First introduced in version 2023.4, Visual Assist begins official Unity support starting with Unity shader file features.

• CUDA core development Parse and analyze CUDA related syntax, libraries, and APIs so you can have IntelliSense-like features, navigation, and highlighting for CUDA (.cu) files.

• HLSL support and expanded shader file support Open and work on shader files as if they were regular C++ files! Features such as navigation, syntax highlighting and coloring support, now works in HLSL, Unreal’s USH/USF files, and even custom shader files.

Productivity tool for C/C++ and C# with support for UE4 & UE5

Visual Assist also fills gaps in the coding experience of Microsoft Visual Studio, making a great IDE, a phenomenal one. Add navigation and syntax highlighting for specialized languages and applications not natively supported by the IDE.

Watch the video below to see how it can help make your coding experience faster and easier:

Sample Features by Category

· Unreal Engine Specific Tooling

Make your games epic with integrated Unreal Engine support (including UE5) and new features that run as fast as your code. Save time, see more and work smarter.

· Navigation

Move about your code efficiently and easily—to any file, method, symbol, or symbol reference in your projects and solutions. Navigate with commands like Find Symbol in Solution, Open File in Solution, an upgraded version of Find References, and Goto Related.

Go to related locations of any symbol, including base classes, derived classes, constructors, and members.

Navigate throughout a solution via VA Hashtags in comments. VA Hashtags are user-defined, shared bookmarks that move with code. You can also use the feature also as a task list.

Navigate among VA Hashtags using a dedicated tool window or local context menu.

· Refactoring

Reduce the complexity of your code, improve its readability, and make it extensible without changing its external behavior. Refactor with commands like Rename, Encapsulate Field, Introduce Variable, and Change Signature.

Use Change Signature to add, remove and reorder parameters in definitions and call sites.

· Code Generation

Generate code quickly with commands like Add Missing Case Statements, Implement Interface / Virtual Methods, and Create from Usage.

Create methods, variables, and enums without leaving your place in code.

· Coding Assistance

Write code with assistance that doesn't get in your way. Select using enhanced member listboxes, surround selections with code snippets, quickly grow selections on logical boundaries, and accept suggestions that appear before you type.

Suggestions include relevant bits of nearby code.

· Code Understanding

Make sense of complex or unfamiliar code with an assortment of informative fields, highlights that update as you move about code, and enhanced syntax coloring.

VA provides timely and contextual hints with tool windows, browsers, and fields. Get information more often, and with more thorough content to help you make sense of code.

· Debug Assistance

Use debugger enhancements in Visual Assist to shorten the time required to debug native C/C++. Browse PDBs efficiently; resolve symbols in text-only call stacks; and use the VA Step Filter to step over trusted methods in argument lists.

· Tool Windows

Access tool windows for a hierarchy of header files, list of recently visited places, and an outline of the current file that allows drag-and-drop to rearrange its contents.

· VA Code Snippets

Expand frequently typed segments of code with a more powerful version of the like-named feature in the IDE. Expand symbols from the current context, prompt for user input, and edit VA Snippets in a custom editor.

· Code Correction

Correct typing mistakes as you make them, including incorrect symbol case, invalid pointer notation, and spelling errors in strings and comments.

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