Reading tektronix internal .wfm files with LV

[caz]

Has anyone wrote a code that can read a tektronix internal .wfm file with labVIEW?  I have TDS7404 and TDS7154B scopes and I can't seem to use the tktds7k drivers on a separate PC to read the .wfm waveforms.  Running LV on the scope itself allows me to recall the waveform and export it in a labview binary format but it would be more efficient, in time and scope memory, to save the .wfm from the scope and do all post processing on an external PC running LV.  Our current group protocol is to export .txt files (yuk!) on the scope and read them into LV only to reconvert them back to a LV friendly binary to save network memory.  Any suggestions?

[Collin M]

There may be a couple ways to do this. I do something similar on a TDS6604, but I am saving a screen capture instead of a .wfm. First I do an "export to file", which saves the file on the scope. Then I do a "file system action" of ReadFile, which sends the file to the GPIB port. Then I do a visa "Read to file", which saves the file on the system running LabVIEW. The "Export to file" and "file system action" are vi's in the scope's LabVIEW driver package.

Depending on the scope, you may also be able to print directly to the GPIB port.

[caz]

Thanks for the response.  What you recommended works but I still have the problem of saving two files to the scope.  A typical measurement for me is offsite away from my analysis computer.  I use the scope to log the biggest files it can and then save each measurement as a .wfm on the scopes HD.  Later on, back at my desk, I want to be able to process these data files with labVIEW and the headache comes from having to export each .wfm on the scope as a .txt file, transfer these large txt files to my network, run a small .vi that reads the txt file and resaves it as binary file that I can then use in my LV data analysis .vi's.  So after all this, I have two files on my scope and two files on my network that all contain the same voltage data that I care about.  Not a big deal if an experiment was maybe 10 runs, but I can easily save 100+ runs in a day and this gets into the data file management issues.  I was just curious if anyone took the time to write a .vi that can pull out the actual voltage array from a tek internal .wfm file.  This would be great in that I can just store data on the scope and then do all post processing later without going through all the file conversions.  Seems like the best thing now would be to use LV on the scope to do the export function and then save it with LV I/O functions in whatever format I choose and then delete the .wfm from the scope.

Drew