Blend for Visual Studio 2012 design view not working

Question

I'm working on a Windows Store App in Visual Studio 2012 and decided it might be easier to start using blend for the interface and layout. But in my attempts to make this layout design easier for myself, I have run into a problem with the design view. The error message is that design view is unavailable for x64 and ARM platforms. I'm familiar with this error from Visual Studio but I was just wondering if there's a simple way to change the target platforms so I can see the design view in Blend?

I know there have been problems with blend for VS 2012 up until now, but I thought maybe this was an easy one to fix that I'm missing somewhere.

If anyone knows a way to fix this I'd really appreciate it. Thanks!

Answer 1

Change .NetFramework from 4.5 to 4.0

Answer 2

Just go to Build->Configuration Manager and change the Platform to 'Any CPU'.

Additionally you can enable the 'Solution Platform' dropdown in the toolbar by clicking the little down arrow right to the debugging Toolbar items then click 'Add remove buttons' and select 'Solution Platforms'.

Answer 3

1. Close Blend
2. Open the project in Visual Studio 2012
3. Change Release/Debug Configuration to Any CPU or x86
4. Save All in Visual Studio to make sure it saves the project (The Project does not save when you run!)
5. Reopen the document in Blend

That's it!

Answer 4

You would need to install windows phone sdk for blend to work correctly in your application. http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=35471