Traditional DAQ in multiple versions of CVI

[Mister_Rose]

I need to support some older programs in our manufacturing area. These programs are written in a few different versions of CVI, but they also use traditional DAQ. I cannot seem to get multiple versions of CVI to work with Tradtional DAQ.

I installed CVI 8.1 and then installed the TDAQ. I was able to open one of my projects that was previously compiled in that environment and everything seemed to work fine. I then installed CVI 9.0. Initially it could not find the header files for the TDAQ, so I pointed it to the CVI 8.1 include folder. The project was able to compile, but it did not link. I was looking for a library to add to the project, but I could not find an obvious tdaq.lib.

What file do I need to add in order to get this to link?

Note: We need to build in the same environment because of validation rules. If I build a program in the same environment, I only need to do a small test to make sure my little change did not adversely affect anything. If I build it in a newer environment, then I need to run a full validation procedure on the entire application, which is a time consuming process. Management does not like to take the line down for a day or two while I validate the "new" application.

[RobertoBozzolo]

The easiest answer in your situation is to reinstall Traditional Daq: it will install in CVI9 directory and will fix all your compiling/linking errors.

[Mister_Rose]

I tried that, but it removed support for the 8.1 version. Is there a possibility of having multiple installations that use the traditional DAQ libraries?

[RobertoBozzolo · Accepted solution]

Ok, so as far as I can understand you have now TDAQ installed in CVI9 and not present in cvi8.

If so, copy the following files from CVI9 folder\subfolder to the corresponding CVI8 one:

<cvi9folder>\bin\     all dataacq.* files and all easyio.* files

<cvi9folder>\extlib\   dataacq.lib and easyio.lib

<cvi9folder>\include\    dataacq.h; easyio.h; nidaqcns.h; nidaqerr.h; olderror.h; regdefs.h

[Mister_Rose]

That did the trick.

Is there any logical reason why NI destroys old environments when they "upgrade"?

[LuisG]

Hi Brian,

CVI can be installed side-by-side, so you can have different versions of CVI, installed simultaneously. However, drivers cannot be installed side-by-side. It's a limitation of the architecture of most drivers that you can only have one version of the driver installed in your computer.

Because the CVI support files of each driver are installed by the driver itself, this means that there can only be one set of support files installed at any one time. So this limitation of only being able to use the driver from a single version of CVI existed for a very long time. Starting with CVI 8.5 however, this problem was addressed by having CVI be able to use the driver support files from a shared location (typically, c:\program files\national instruments\shared\cvi\bin). This allows one single set of driver support files to be used by multiple CVI installations. Therefore, going forward, this problem will dissipate. However, there are a couple of caveats related to this transition:

1. This only works for versions of CVI that are 8.5 or later (2007).

2. This only works with drivers that have been updated since 2007.

Because Traditional DAQ is a legacy driver, it hasn't been updated in many years, and so it does not support installing its CVI support files to the shared location.

Luis

[Mr. Mu]

Hi,

I was having the same problem.  My current CVI 2009 include folder does not have the easyio.h file, and I can't seem to locate it anywhere.  When I uninstalled CVI 8.0 (to install the newest version), I deleted all the associated folders as well.  I was wondering if CVI 2009 has a different .h file that replaces the easyio.h or if I could find the easyio.h file anywhere.

-Jason

[Mr. Mu]

Problem solved, please disregard post.