Top Visual Assist Features

Navigation

Move about your code with newfound ease—to any file, method, symbol, or reference in your projects and solutions. Get anywhere from anywhere.

The navigation features of Visual Assist, like the other types of features, are entirely new to the IDE, improve built-in functionality, or in a few instances, apply only to older IDEs.

Refactoring

Reduce the complexity of your code, improve its readability, and make it extensible without changing its external behavior. Refactor legacy code, code you inherit, or the first version of your own work.

Code Generation

Generate code faster than you think possible, even if you use just a handful of the features in Visual Assist. As you become a proficient user, write and update code even faster.

Coding Assistance

Write code faster with assistance that doesn't get in your way, especially when you're on a roll. Visual Assist suggests completions only if they save you serious typing, and quietly fixes mistakes in your wake.

Code Understanding

Make sense of complex code, or code you haven't touched in a long time, with an assortment of tool windows, browsers, and fields that provide information where and when you need it.

Code Correction

Watch Visual Assist correct mistakes as you make them, especially errors in symbol case and pointer notation. Type entirely in lower case, and watch Visual Assist correct the case of all of your symbols. Save the shift key for your definitions.

Code Inspection

Inspect your code for specific quality issues as you edit. The Code Inspection feature of Visual Assist, based on LLVM/Clang, diagnoses and fixes typical programming errors, like style violations, interface misuse, and bugs that can be deduced via static analysis.

Code Snippets

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

Debug Assistance

Use the VA Memory View and the VA Step Filter included with Visual Assist to shorten the time required to debug native C/C++.

Tool Windows

View code from 30,000 feet, and rearrange code so it's easier to understand and maintain. Tool windows in Visual Assist supply entirely new functionality to the IDE, and bring together oft-used built-in functionality to more efficient tool windows.

Source Links

Connect comment substrings to external applications and websites, such as bug trackers, case managers, documentation, and source code control systems.

Configuration

Adjust the multitude of features in Visual Assist to suit your programming environment and habits. Find your favorite features, and make them hum for maximum productivity.