If you have Visual Studio installed when you install CodeSmith, CodeSmith will install itself as a Visual Studio package.

To use CodeSmith Explorer from within Visual Studio, select CodeSmith Explorer from the Tools menu. This will open the CodeSmith Explorer tool window. This window can be floating or docked, just like any other Visual Studio tool window.

CodeSmith Explorer has the same functionality in Visual Studio .NET that it does as a standalone program.

One very useful capability of CodeSmith Explorer within Visual Studio is drag-and-drop code generation. For example, you could use this capability to quickly replace the autogenerated AssemblyInfo.cs file in a new C# project with the one generated by the AssemblyInfo.cst template. Just delete the autogenerated file contents and drag the template from the CodeSmith Explorer tool window to the code window in the IDE. CodeSmith will display the template's property sheet. Fill in the required properties and click the Generate button to generate code wherever you dropped the template.

Note: This feature is only available in the Professional Edition of CodeSmith.

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