Upgrading large application programmed in Labview 6.1 to 7.x,

[elmo]

After buying some M Series hardware and finding I cant use it with LabVIEW 6.1 (I think), I need to find out how much effort is required to upgrade to LabVIEW 7.1.

Anyone give me a guide into how difficult this would be?

Thanks.

[LV_Pro]

For the most part it should be just loading all of the vi's, clicking on the run arrow and then, when exiting, answering Yes to the question about saving all the sub-vi's. Opening in a higher version automatically upgrades to the newer version (hence the "change asterix" that shows up in the title bar).

While they have added a lot of features since 6.1, I don't recall any that should break the code.


P.M.

[Mark H]

In most cases you'll probably find it's extremely easy.

Just buy a LabVIEW upgrade - install - load the 6.1 VIs into LV 7.1 - the VIs are converted automaticaly whilst loading - then the VIs will be version 7.1 when saved.

Notes:

You can expect to get the regular "Save changed VI/Sub VIs?" dialog as a result of loading the VIs into a higher version of LV.

There is the facility to "mass compile" whole folders and/or llb libraries of VIs without having to load them up for editing.

N.B. You do not have to uninstall previous versions of LV. You can keep multiple versions on your PC (only using one at a time though).

LV 7.1 will only "save for previous version (v7.0)" - you can't convert backwards from 7.1 to 6.1 unless you have all the inbetween versions (e.g. v7.0).

IMPORTANT: This last point is important - because LV 7.1 can't save back to version 6.1, you must be very carefull to keep seperate version 6.1 VI copies if you need to still load them into version 6.1 for any reason.

Finally - you will always find that there are a few library VIs and functions that are changed when versions are updated, but in my experience there's usually nothing that can't be sorted out fairly easily.

[Lilly N]

Hi,

Although saving up to LabVIEW 7.1 from 6.1 is not that hard, if you are going to be using LabVIEW with the M-Series hardware you have purchased, that is where it may get a little more complicated. The reason you would not be able to use LabVIEW 6.1 with M-Series is to do with the driver version that supports M-Series. M-Series is supported under the DAQmx driver only, which in turn is supported by LabVIEW 7.0 and above. Traditional DAQ can stil be used in LabVIEW 7.0 and above, it is just M-Series hardware that will not be able to use Traditional DAQ.

Some further information about these drivers can be found at the following, including further links to examples and help on transitioning from Traditional DAQ to DAQmx:

http://zone.ni.com/devzone/conceptd.nsf/webmain/EE47B125BB9E053686256FBC0014C384?OpenDocument&node=10181_US

It depends on what was originally in the LabVIEW 6.1 application as to how difficult it will be to convert to LabVIEW 7.1.

If you need any more information, feel free to post again.

Regards,

Lilly
National Instruments UK & Ireland

[chrisger]

hi there

i've been upgrading a larger app from LV 6.0 to 7.0. please read the upgrade notes very carefully, there have been some changes that may result in different behaviour of your code while the code itself is executable, for example the "First Call?" function, ActiveX and the Event - structure.

best regards and don't forget to make some backups
chris

[TLE]

I currently have both LabVIEW 6.1 and 7.1 installed on my PC. We have several commercial application built in LabVIEW. One has been upgraded to 7.1, the rest are still in 6.1. We are using DAQ 6.9.3 and an E series DAQ card so we do not have any DAQmx issues. So far LabVIEW 6.1 and 7.1 are living together in harmony. We just have to maintain two sets of source code, one for 6.1 and one for 7.1.

The upgrade of the one application from 6.1 to 7.1 was quite painless.