National Instruments VXI-USB

Chapter 1 Introduction

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

IEEE4 88.2 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.

Measurement Studio allows you to choose from standard environments

such as Microsoft Visual Basic, Visual C++, and Visual Studio .NET to

create your application, using tools specific for each language. With

Measurement Studio, you can write programs quickly and easily and

modify them as your needs change.

LabWindows/CVI is an interactive ANSI C programming environment

designed for building virtual instrument applications. LabWindows/CVI

delivers a drag-and-drop editor for building user interfaces, a complete

ANSI C environment for building your test program logic, and a collection

of automated code generation tools, as well as utilities for building

automated test systems, monitoring applications, or laboratory

experiments.

To use any of these application programs, install them before installing the

NI-VISA/NI-VXI software. LabVIEW, Measurement Studio, and

LabWindows/CVI integrate the VXI and VISA libraries required to support

your VXI-USB. You also get hundreds of complete instrument drivers,

which are modular, source-code programs that handle the communication

with your instrument to speed your application development.