Developing Your Application; National Instruments Application Software - National Instruments VXI-MXI-Express Series User Manual

Developing Your Application

National Instruments Application Software

© National Instruments
This chapter discusses the software utilities you can use to start developing
applications that use NI-VXI. Be sure to check the release notes for the
latest application development notes and changes.
Your software features several system development utilities including
MAX, Resman, NI I/O Trace, VISA Interactive Control (VISAIC), and
optionally VXI Interactive Control (VIC). You can also access online
help and a variety of examples to learn how to use NI-VXI for certain
tasks. Each component assists you with one of four development steps:
configuration, device interaction, programming, and debugging.
You can access the utilities, help files, and release notes through the
Windows Start menu by opening the National Instruments»VXI or
National Instruments»VISA program groups.
In addition to the NI-VISA/NI-VXI software, you can use the National
Instruments LabVIEW, Measurement Studio, and LabWindows
application programs and instrument drivers to ease your programming
task. These standardized programs match the modular virtual instrument
capability of VXI and can reduce your VXI/VME software development
time. These programs are fully VXIplug&play compliant and feature
extensive libraries of VXI instrument drivers written to take full
advantage of direct VXI control. LabVIEW, Measurement Studio, and
LabWindows/CVI include all the tools needed for instrument control, data
acquisition, analysis, and presentation.
LabVIEW is an easy-to-use, graphical programming environment you can
use to acquire data from thousands of different instruments, including
IEEE 488.2 devices, VXI devices, serial devices, PLCs, and plug-in data
acquisition boards. After you have acquired raw data, you can convert
it into meaningful results using the powerful data analysis routines in
LabVIEW. LabVIEW also comes with hundreds of instrument drivers,
which dramatically reduce software development time, because you do not
need to spend time programming the low-level control of each instrument.
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VXI-MXI-Express Series User Manual
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