How to concatenate TDM files in DiaDem

[Brad_Turpin]

Hi Saloutios,

Let us know what comes of deleting the *.tdms_index files.  What happens if you change line 10 of the VBScript to this:

ChannelSet = "[1]/[1-2]"

This should load only the first 2 channels from each TDMS file.  If that works, then that would suggest that the problem is related to memory management either inside DIAdem or outside DIAdem.

Do you need to look at all the channels at once?

Brad Turpin

DIAdem Product Support Engineer
National Instruments

[Saloutios]

Adam and Brad, thank you for your replies. I would like to apologize for the late reply as I was out of office the last week.

@Adam G

There might have been a problem with the last file as you mentioned because after recreating it I didnt get an error. Nevertheless if I try to load the three 500MB files, DIAdem stalls and eventually not responding. So there might be a problem with memory management. I only thought that DIAdem would be able to load even those big files only because TDMS files themselves can save massive amount of data, far more 500MB, in one file, so I thought that a 500MB wont be a problem.

@Brad,

I edited the script as you suggested and even it took around 5-6 minutes, it worked. It might not be necessary to load all channels but I would like to load at least 6 channels at once.

[Otmar]

Hello Saloutios,

Have you tried "Register loading" the 500 MB files rather than outright loading them into the DataPortal in DIAdem.

Three 500MB files, plus the OS and DIAdem in memory will very likely exceed the amount of RAM available and result in DIAdem having to use virtual (i.e. hard disk) memory. The "Register Data" function is available when you right click on a data file in the NAVIGATOR and select the second option from the top (see image below).

The "Register Data" function works by using the actual TDMS file on the hard disk, rather than copying all the data into the DataPortal. It will NOT harm the file in any way, i.e. there is no need to worry about accidentally corrupting or deleting any data in the file.

Let us know if that helps speed up your application ..

[Saloutios]

Hello Otmar,

I used the "Register" function and it works fine. All data files are loaded and quite quickly too. I get a small arrow icon at my channel icons. Are there any limitations regarding data managing when using this function?

Thank you,

Panos

[Brad_Turpin]

Hi Panos,

Yes, when you register-load data channels, they are read-only.  That means you can not change any of the values in those channels inside DIAdem.  You can also not change any of the loaded File/Group/Channel properties, nor can you add any new properties to register-loaded File/Groups/Channels.

Brad Turpin

DIAdem Product Support Engineer
National Instruments

[Saloutios]

Hi,

As a last resort I have converted my tdms files to tdm so data has been coerced from U64 to I32 so I get more compact files and I dont seem to miss vital data.   Editing: And I am not sure if this actually the reason I am getting smaller files  Couldnt think of any other swift solution.

Cheers

[TBirkulosis]

For  anyone searching for the example scripts:

The new location of the Appending example in DIAdem 2012 SP1 is: Help > Examples, Examples > Creating Scripts > Scripts > Concatenate Channels or Merging Channels from Different Measurements