Confused with various NI products.

[nonomiya]

Hi All...

It is confused for various installation program,

1. no matter what IVI vendor, the NI MAX ALWAYS should be installed in the system for configuration.?
2. there are many program/component be introduced as follows,
   NI IVI Engine...(what is different with C-Shared Component and ICP??)
   NI IVI Compliance Package? (will install C-Shared Components??)
   C Shared Component.
   NI VISA/Agilent VISA/TK VISA/ ...
3. Is there any overlapped function for above products?

What absolutely should be installed or be auto-installed for IVI driver environment.....
any order concern or version control issue?
CONFUSED...............

much thanks,

[Dr_Jonno]

1-yes, you need NI max. This is where you tie the hardware and the IVI driver and a 'logical name (which you define)' together. Your IVI application just addresses the 'logical name', making MAX essential.

2-You must have some of these components (eg IVI engine), and (I think) it's just that some drivers may want other components to be installed as well because they use some of the common functionality. I've only used 3 IVI devices, but they all require the latest NI IVI complicance package and Visa to be installed. I don't know what the specific differences are that you asked about

In general, the IVI driver installation will tell you if you need to install some other components

I'm quite new to IVI myself, and I can understand your confusion. Using IVI is straightforward, but information is so disjointed it's hard to get the whole picture sometimes

[Chris_R.]

Hi Nonomiya,

What Dr. Jonno said above is correct. Also, there is a readme file on each download page for the different software you mentioned.  The IVI Compliance Package download page, for example, has a readme file that mentions the known conflicts with the software and the system/software requirements.  I hope this is the information you are needing, but let me know if you have any additional questions!

Chris R.

Applications Engineer

National Instruments

[nonomiya]

Hi All,

I think i have to clear the question mentioned before,

I know what the difference among different VISA libraries now,
My questions is:

1) If I install NI Compliance Package, so I do not need to install C-Shared component library, right?
2) I see the installation flow will tell user what libray or preinstallation it need,
    I just want to know the dependence,

   for example,
   I got a NI-IVI driver,
   => So, I must install C-SharedComponent Library+NI-VISA+NI Engine+NI ICP+ MAX
   if I got another vendor's IVI driver,
   => So, I must install C-Shared Component Library+XX-VISA+NI's MAX

3) If another vendor's IVI driver want to support MAX, they must offer the driver for NI's MAX,
    so that they can configure the IVI features about IVI on MAX, right?
    or, other vendors will offer the IVI configuration tool just like Ni's MAX.

I must got to know what is the necessary installation items for our driver development,
no matter what vendor's IVI driver be used.

much thanks~

[nonomiya]

Hello,  are there any suggestions?

[Dr_Jonno]

I'm not 100% sure of all these issues, but this is my understanding:

1 - correct. Similarly if you were just to install another IO package, eg from agilent, they would put c-shared components in there as well.

2 -
- install ivi compliance package. This has the shared libraries and the ivi engine. THis is the bit you need to get IVI 'working'
http://digital.ni.com/softlib.nsf/webcategories/85256410006C055586256BE6007065DD?opendocument&node=132060_US

- SOme (probably all) drivers need NI-VISA. SOme drivers specifically will ask for a later version (usually 2.6). Note, if you want to install the agilent io suite with VISA-com running as a secondary visa driver, you will need NI-visa v3

- I don't think you MUST have NI-max, but it is the easiest way to a) look at the gpib devices and b) configure the ivi configuration store (aka iviconfigstore). THis config store is (I think) installed with the ivi compliance package and with max

- you don't specifically need to install the ivi engine. it comes with the compliance package

You've probably seen this 1000 times before and thought it was confusing! Well, if not you may get something useful from it
http://zone.ni.com/devzone/conceptd.nsf/webmain/706EFD334E77DCCE86256DB50062E903?OpenDocument&node=dz52000_us

3 - I don't think other vendor's 'support max' as such. MAX simply talks to the IVI configuration store which is where all the ivi settings are stored. And your IVI application goes to this configstore to resolve the logical name into the hardware + driver + settings. Max is simply a graphical interface for this config store, at least that is my understanding! SO any IVI driver will 'appear' in max.