Alias not showing in Visa Reference

[ewtotem]

Yes, I can control my instruments through GPIB  "Communicate with Instrument"  and LV7.1.  How do I delete the Aliases in MAX?

Please see attached

[Sarah_R]

ewtotem,

To delete an alias in Measurement & Automation: Open MAX >> Software >> NI-VISA >> Visa Options Tab. You will then be able to see all the Alias names and be able to clear them.

Attached is a screen shot of where exactly this is in MAX.

Hope this is able to help.

[ewtotem]

We are successful!

I am still curious how to delete the alias (I'm still curious how to do that), but I changed the name to something else in MAX, then back again to the desired name.  I saved each individual GPIB instrument,  then saved All. When I finished, I closed all NI programs then fired up my VI.  The VISA names were then available!

Yea!

It seems I did something like this before, but I have been through so many iterations, I'm not sure anymore.  I did the following that may have jogged things up:

I manually entered the VISA aliases in C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\National Instruments\NIvisa\Visaconf.ini

Basic form:

[ALIASES]
Alias0 = "'DCLOADDIGITAL','GPIB0::1::INSTR'"
Alias1 = "'DCLOADANALOG','GPIB0::2::INSTR'"
Alias2 = "'ACSOURCE','GPIB0::3::INSTR'"
Alias3 = "'METER','GPIB0::4::INSTR'"
Alias4 = "'ACLOADHTR2','GPIB0::6::INSTR'"

NumAliases = 5

That does force MAX to adopt these names BUT the LV VISA I/O fields are not selectable (greyed out)

I then backed up the visaconf.ini filed and deleted the original.  I started up MAX a resaved everything.  The visaconf.ini created was much smaller, and an instrument VI was no longer functional.  It was reversable, meaning I was able to restore the original visaconf.ini and not make it any worse.

[Sarah_R]

ewtotem,

You should be able to delete the alias using the steps in the previous post. Also the following KnowledgeBase discusses removing resource names, which steps through deleting them directly from the visaconf.ini file.

Glad everything is working. Have a great day.

[ewtotem]

Wow, you're quick!

Soory, I didn't  see your last post before you hit "send" - works great!

[ewtotem]

Here's also another great method:

The newer versions of MAX have a utility to configure your aliases. To access this utility, open MAX, and select Tools>>NI-VISA>>VISA Options.

Then select "Aliases" and all the aliases stored on your system will show up here. Find your GPIB device and try to add an alias. To clear out an individual alias, right click on it and select "Clear Alias". There are buttons to Rename, Add or Clear All aliases at the bottom.

Regards

Chris

Applications Engineer

National Instruments

[j_osh_o]

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@Sarah_S wrote:
ewtotem,

Ignoring the VISA Alias initially, are you able to communicate with the device in Measurement & Automation and LabVIEW? If so, please delete and then recreate the same Visa Alias for that device. If you rename it, are you able to see the Visa Alias in LabVIEW?

Hope you have a great day.

---

I had a similar problem where I could see the aliases in MAX, but I could not use them in TestStand.  As Sarah recommended, I deleted them and re-created them, and they worked.  Before this episode, I had been playing around with permissions on the boot drive of my PC, so somehow the VISA software was trying to read something on the drive, was denied access, and decided that the aliases were invalid.  So each time I tried to use these invalid aliases, it wouldn't work.  But when I deleted and recreated them they worked fine.

[A1Penguin]

I have just had this same issue.   While the solution listed in this thread got me back up and running, it is not a good long term solution for me.

In 2013, shutting down my test stand and turning it back on again did not cause any problem.  After returning from break in 2014, every time the test stand is shut down (only two data points so far) LabVIEW does not see the GPIB aliases which are saved in MAX.  After I resave them in  MAX, everything is fine.   Nothing has changed with the instruments or the computer other than the year.  LAN instruments in the test stand do not have this problem.  Thanks in advance for any help.

[Door-C]

A1Penguin,

What version of the VISA driver do you have? If it is older, you may try to upgrade that driver.