7. MERLIC comes with many built-in MVTec tools
Checking Counting Measuring
Defect Detection Reading Position Determination
8. MERLIC is your all-in-one solution
Checking Counting Measuring
Defect Detection Reading Position Determination
Acquisition AlignmentCalibration
PostprocessingPreprocessing Processing
Communication SystemEvaluation
15. Machine vision experts have a lot of work
supplying inhouse integrators
Inhouse IntegratorMachine Vision Expert
Customized
Machine Vision
Software
16. With MERLIC, inhouse integrators can create their
own solutions
Inhouse IntegratorMachine Vision Expert
.mvapp
Machine Vision
Framework
Using
MERLIC Engine
17. MERLIC frontends can easily be integrated
into your existing framework
MyCompany
MVTec Software GmbH is a leading international manufacturer of software for machine vision used in all demanding areas of imaging: semi-conductor industry, web inspection, quality control and inspection applications in general, medicine, surveillance etc.
MVTec's innovative work is driven by a commitment to be the number one supplier for sophisticated technologies in machine vision. MVTec is engaged in sponsoring various activities in universities, thus participating in the challenging process of understanding how machines can be taught to see.
MERLIC is an all-in-one software product for quickly building machine vision applications without programming. It is based on MVTec's extensive machine vision expertise and combines reliable, fast performance with ease of use.
Machine vision software can be hard to use. Often, some kind of programming is necessary, rendering it inaccessible to many users. Even if you know how to program, many features are hard to comprehend, and require in-depth knowledge. If the program is easy and no programming is required, it often isn’t powerful enough to solve the tasks at hand.
The very clear and reduced interface presents a large view on the processed image in the center of the program. The tool library on the left side provides many standard vision tools such as acquisition, calibration, alignment, measuring, counting, checking, reading, position determination, and defect detection. Each tool has its own graphical representation in the workspace, which allows you to see and review every step of your vision application when scrolling the workspace. The image-centered design allows you to configure the application directly via the image without the need to write source code or to adjust lots of parameters.
An outstanding, innovative, and unique feature in MERLIC is the “easyTouch” concept. It helps to guide the user interactively towards the solution. For example, simply hover the mouse pointer over an image and “easyTouch” recognizes and marks objects to be identified.
You can choose relevant objects with just a single click. Thus, you don't have to configure complex parameters. In addition, some tools support “easyTouch+” where you can select multiple objects (by holding the CTRL-key) to configure parameters even better for your purpose. “easyTouch” saves you a lot of time during development.
A key objective in developing MERLIC was to provide a user-friendly and efficient workflow experience. Consequently, the support for multiple languages is a key feature. Therefore, MERLIC is available in the following languages: simplified and traditional Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Spanish and Thai.
It‘s even possible to add customized translations for customer-specific parameters. If an application shows the width of a particular part with a specific name, this word may be translated and MERLIC will be able to adapt the GUI to this.
Not only MERLIC’s graphical user interface (GUI) is translated into the developer’s first language, but even the entire standard documentation is available in these languages.
By offering multiple languages MERLIC does not only simplify the development of an application. At the same time, companies may broaden their business area by exporting machines to other countries without a language barrier. With MERLIC, even machines which are produced for example in Germany with a German backend may receive an English user interface to be sold in the US.
MERLIC’s integrated tool library contains a wide range of tools for the most common vision processing tasks. To facilitate the ease of use, all included tools are named after the task they are meant to execute. Several ‘Evaluation’ tools support you with a variety of evaluation processes. For example, they perform calculations or evaluate a feature of a specific region. Having set up the application, MERLIC offers a wide range of ‘Communication’ tools, which enable you to send and receive data or alternatively read and write to files.
MERLIC goes beyond mere imaging and facilitates access to all elements of the machine vision peripherals as well as a seamless PLC connection. The software supports the entire process of developing an application, from acquiring and processing images to the programmable control (PLC) of the machine. As a stand-alone software package, MERLIC therefore offers full integration, including digital I/O and the OPC UA standard.
Last but not least, the existing tool library can be extended flexibly with customized, user-defined tools to suit any additional needs. These tools can be developed in MVTec HALCON's integrated development environment HDevelop.
With the combined power of MERLIC’s integrated tool library and the individual ‘custom’ tools, you can now solve even the most complex machine vision tasks.
For many customers, creating a graphical user interface is one of the most disliked and time-consuming parts of their projects.There are many different programming APIs not everybody is familiar with. In addition to that, programming is difficult and takes too much time.
Using MERLIC, there is no need to buy additional software to create a GUI. Moreover, the time for creating a GUI is reduced significantly; creating a GUI is easier than ever and can be done in no time.
MERLIC's Designer lets you create a customized operator interface in just a few steps. Interactively design a frontend for your application: choose between various widgets and simply place them via drag-and-drop. MERLIC's Designer automatically links the widgets to parameters of MERLIC tools. The parameter values can then be used either for visualization or to enable the operator to interactively configure parameters in the frontend. Properties of widgets can be adjusted easily with just a few clicks. You may even customize the frontend, for example, by integrating any background image or company logo.
With MERLIC User Management, each person is assigned to a user-defined group, for example, machine operator, machine setter, or manager. These groups can have specific frontends appropriate for their tasks and the desired access privileges. For example, the machine operator can only view the images and start/stop the application, the machine setter can re-train the application in the frontend and adjust parameters, whereas the manager has full access to all functionalities.
Moreover, the manager may access more “logfiles” and more statistics to get a better idea of what is going on.
MERLIC enables accessing a GUI from a remote location.
Remote frontends allow to display the graphical user interface somewhere far away from the actual camera where the inspection takes place.
This enables you to supervise your machines from anywhere in the world. Thus, travelling costs can be reduced, and your employees are more productive.
You need to supervise the whole production line and therefore need multiple frontends at the same time? That is easily possible with MERLIC.
Integrators don’t need to go to the factory floor just to check something on the machine. Instead, they can fix it right away from their office.
Customers can monitor their whole production line in one place and don't have to go to the production floor.
You have a dedicated machine vision department in your company? And all your machine vision experts are busy supplying the inhouse integrators with individual customized solutions for every new inspection task?
With MERLIC, you can reduce your experts’ workload dramatically.
Using MERLIC Engine, you can create a framework that loads and executes MERLIC Vision Apps on demand. This way, the inhouse integrators can build their own simple solutions with MERLIC, store them as MVApp, and use them in their machines without needing to consult the machine vision experts.
In the same way, small changes and adaptions can easily be made by the integrators themselves.
With MERLIC Engine, the utilization of MERLIC has become even more flexible. Now, users can create MERLIC applications within the user-friendly MERLIC Backend and then directly start them within a separate application.
An ActiveX control can display the Frontend as designed in the MERLIC Designer. This provides the visualization of the data and results.
MERLIC is your solution. Why?
MERLIC is an all-in-one software product for quickly building machine vision applications without any need for programming.
It is based on MVTec's extensive machine vision expertise and combines reliable, fast performance with ease of use.
An image-centered user interface and intuitive interaction concepts like “easyTouch” provide an efficient workflow, which leads to time and cost savings.
MERLIC is
easy to use – even less experienced users/engineers can easily solve tasks,
powerful – it contains numerous tools for different kinds of machine vision applications,
all-in-one – it doesn‘t require any additional software,
innovative – it is based on many new and unique concepts not found in any other machine vision software, such as “easyTouch” that interactively guides towards a solution.
Whenever the user needs help, MVTec’s local distributors can be contacted. MERLIC customers benefit from MVTec’s wide range of highly qualified services, such as:
Free application evaluation, also prior to purchase
Free regional support for MERLIC
Easy maintenance by free web download of newest software releases
Built-in documentation for every user and proficiency level
Various example programs; tutorial videos
MERLIC goes beyond mere imaging and facilitates access to all elements of the machine vision peripherals as well as a seamless PLC connection. The software supports the entire process of developing an application, from acquiring and processing images to the programmable control (PLC) of the machine. As a stand-alone software package, MERLIC therefore offers full integration, including digital I/O and the OPC UA standard. This way, MERLIC-based applications can communicate directly with the machine and, for example, control lights, motion, and much more without the need to integrate any specific SDKs.
The OPC UA communication model establishes MERLIC as the OPC UA client, which communicates with the PLC via an OPC UA server. This structure allows ultimate interoperability between the different devices, providing maximum flexibility within the application.
MERLIC supports a whole range of industrial cameras on the market.
You can connect any camera that complies to one of the widely-used image acquisition standards GigEVision, USB3Vision, or GenICamTL with just a few mouse clicks.
When a user interacts with MERLIC, all interactions are saved to a daily MERLIC logfile.
There is no need to purchase a license for each computer where you want to run or access your frontend. Only the computer that is connected with the machine and which is running MERLIC needs a license. Thus, accessing a frontend remotely is possible very easily.
Another useful feature is the password protection for MERLIC Apps. With this you can protect your MVApps against non-authorized code access from third parties and thus secure your intellectual property. Additionally, the password protection comes in handy when you want to pass on a MERLIC MVApp to customers who should not be able to change the App itself.
HALCON and MERLIC can be combined in multiple ways. For example, HDevelop procedures can be used as custom tools in MERLIC, or OCR fonts that are available (or trained by the user) can be used with MERLIC. All cameras and I/O interfaces that are supported by HALCON, can be integrated by creating a customized MERLIC tool with HDevelop.