Software Development - Eclipse

In my spare time, I like to pursue my previous vocation as an earth scientist. I don't really have the time or scope to do field research, so I tend to play with computer models. Once I start getting results from some exploration, I like see what the result looks like. Sometimes a set of 2D graphs are sufficient, but sometimes I like to see three dimensional models. I did a lot of OpenGL work at one time (see some of the examples elsewhere on my site). I did that work in C++, but lately I have had some fun exploring Java. So I thought it would be fun to combine OpenGL and Java. I use Eclipse in my work on a daily basis so naturally I thought I'd check out OpenGL in Eclipse. This turned out to be a rather arduous and somewhat convoluted journey. As usual with Eclipse, documentation and tutorials were somewhat sketchy. But I have finally gotten to the point where I have the tools I need and can go back to what I started this all for - my modelling. But since I spent all this time figuring out how to do this in Eclipse, I though I would share my experience.

Usually the window toolkit you use for JOGL is dictated by your application. If you're writing an Eclipse-based application, it makes sense to use SWT, since it's the native windowing system of Eclipse. Otherwise, Swing is probably the way to go. If you want to wrap native controls instead of drawing in software like Swing, and you're not writing an Eclipse app, AWT is your best choice.