requirements for creating labview DLLs

[Carla]

I use Labview 7.1 Professional to develop my applications. I would like to know what are the minimum requirements I need with it to create Labview libraries (DLLs)(so I can consolidate all my VIs). Thanks.

[Chaos]

You can check the system requirements for LabVIEW itself in the 7.1 release notes:
http://digital.ni.com/manuals.nsf/websearch/0FB36A66EDEA837A86256E40007051FF?OpenDocument

Or in short:
LabVIEW requires a minimum of 128 MB of RAM and a screen resolution of 800 × 600 pixels, but National Instruments recommends 256 MB of RAM and a screen resolution of 1,024 × 768 pixels. (UNIX) LabVIEW requires a minimum of 64 MB of RAM, but National Instruments recommends 256 MB of RAM. When you deploy an application you build, the LabVIEW Run-Time Engine requires a minimum of 64 MB of RAM and a screen resolution of 800 × 600 pixels for applications that require a screen, but National Instruments recommends 256 MB of RAM and a screen resolution of 1,024 × 768 pixels.


If you can install and run LabVIEW there should be no other limitations as far as I am aware...

[Carla]

Oops! I should have mentioned - my question is NOT what I need in terms of system resources. My question is whether I need any additional toolkits, software.....

[AlejandroZ]

If you have LabVIEW Professional, which includes the Application Builder, you do not need anything else to be able to create .dll files or executables. You must remember that you need the LabVIEW runtime engine installed in any computer where you want to USE the dll or executable. The runtime engine must be of the same version as the LabVIEW version you used to create the executable or dll.

The runtime engine is free (license-free) and can be downloaded from NI's website.

[Carla]

That is correct and I have tried it. There are 3 files created. For example, testLib.dll,
testLib.h, and testLib.lib
However, when I try to open it, I get an error me "The file is not a VI. Select another?"

In earlier versions of Labview, there was a *.llb file created. When you try to open this *.llb file, you could pick the VI to open from a File Dialog window. I can't do that now.

[tbob]

A dll and llb are two different things. You can't open a DLL with Labview, but you can call it's functions using the Call Library function. DLL's are usually functions written in one language (typically C) and called by another. If you just want to collect your vi's together into one file, use the llb. You can create llb's with the newer versions of Labview. You can start a blank vi, put all your vi's in the block diagram (no wires) and then select Save with Options - Development Distribution. I believe this will create an LLB with all the vi's in your block diagram. There are also two selections under Tools menu, VI Library Manager, and Edit VI Library. Both of these are useful in creating and adding vi's to LLBs.

[Chaos]

Ahh, this isnt the same as creating a DDL. Quite different. If you want to create a LabVIEW library the easiest way is to make a new directory and place all the VIs you want to have included in the library in that directory. Then go to [Tools|VI Library Manager] and on the left pane choose the directory you created and click on "Convert Dirs to LLBs..." and pick a destination folder. 😃

[Dennis_Knutson]

There is a huge difference between a dll and an llb. A dll is a special kind of executable for windows. An llb is a LabVIEW library file and is created from the Save, Save As, or Save with Options menu. I recomend that you only use an llb for distributing VIs and not for grouping them together in development. A single corrupt VI in an llb can make the whole llb unreadable. Llbs made more sense when the OS didn't support long file names.

[chrisger]

hi

just a gimmick:

when you rename a .exe or .dll created with the application builder to .llb, you can see the VIs contained.

best regards
chris

[Fuzzy Me]

 Dennis Knutson ,

Which of the following is best way to ship the set of function (Confidential Algorithm developed using LabVIEW) to customer,

1) DLL

2) LLB

Where could I find the all differences between DLL and LLB In LabVIEW ?

Regards

Hemant