Windows Publishing

Building for Windows allows you to distribute your Digital Twin as a standalone executable that runs on Windows machines without requiring Unity Editor or any special licenses.

Build Settings

To build for Windows, select Windows as the target platform in Build Settings (File > Build Settings...).

Player Settings

For building on Windows, the following settings are recommended in Player Settings.

Scripting Backend

Mono compiles much faster than IL2CPP and is recommended for most Windows builds.

Mono and .Net Framework player build settings

Scripting Define Symbols

Please also make sure that Scripting Define Symbols are set as needed for your installation (see compiler-defines.md).

Build Process

Open File > Build Settings
Select Windows as the target platform
Click Add Open Scenes to include your Digital Twin scene
Configure Player Settings as described above
Click Build and choose your destination folder
Unity will create an executable and data folder

Distribution

After building, you will have:

YourProjectName.exe - The executable file
YourProjectName_Data folder - Required data and assets
UnityPlayer.dll and other DLL files - Required Unity runtime libraries

Distribute all files together. The executable requires the data folder and DLLs to run properly.

Performance Considerations

Mono vs IL2CPP: Mono compiles faster and has similar runtime performance for most scenarios
Graphics API: Windows supports DirectX 11 and DirectX 12
Architecture: Target x86_64 for modern 64-bit Windows systems
Optimization: Use IL2CPP for production builds if startup time is not critical

Interface Support

Windows builds support all realvirtual interfaces including:

OPC-UA
S7 TCP/IP
Modbus
TwinCAT ADS
MQTT
Shared Memory
And all other platform-specific interfaces

For interface limitations on other platforms, see supported-platforms.md.