I've attached an example of a simple vi I put together to test serial communications with a new instrument that just arrived. I normally don't worry about dumping the buffer in the final vi, but in the case of something new I sometimes put it in. This vi configures the port settings, dumps the buffer, sends the command, waits a bit to give the instrument time to reply, reads the buffer and parses out the data. This instrument is a little strange in that it does not always return the same number of bytes of data. That is why I use the Property Node to tell me how many bytes are in the buffer. The very last step is one of the most important. Close the VISA connection. You could also use the VISA events vi's to watch for data arriving in the buffer instead of using the delay between the write and read.
Hope this helps
