Migrating from Industrial Gadgets .NET to Symbol Factory Universal

The recommended replacement for Industrial Gadgets .NET is Symbol Factory Universal.

Industrial Gadgets .NET is based on legacy GDI+ graphics technology and is no longer the recommended solution for new development. Customers looking for a modern equivalent should use Symbol Factory Universal, which provides a comparable library of industrial graphics using modern formats such as SVG while still supporting export to PNG, JPG, and other formats.

Symbol Factory Universal is the current generation of the Software Toolbox symbol library. It provides:

• A modern, actively maintained symbol library
• A significantly expanded collection of industrial and automation symbols in formats such as SVG, VML, PNG, and JPG
• Ongoing support

Symbol Factory Universal includes many of the same industrial components previously available in Industrial Gadgets .NET, including pilot lights, pushbuttons, switches, LED displays, and other common HMI graphics. These symbols can be found in categories beginning with "Gadget", alongside newer symbol collections.

Unlike Industrial Gadgets .NET, Symbol Factory Universal is a standalone application rather than a Visual Studio control library. Symbols are created or selected within the application, exported or copied into a .NET project, and then bound to application data within the customer's application.

Because the products use different technologies (legacy GDI+ controls versus modern symbol assets), there is no automated migration or one-to-one component replacement. 

Migration is typically performed by replacing each Industrial Gadgets object with the corresponding Symbol Factory Universal symbol and updating the application's properties and event handling as needed. While some application changes are required, customers familiar with their existing implementation generally find the migration to be straightforward.