Should I get Measurement Studio to use old C drivers with C# .NET?

[joshxdr]

I am making a very simple test automation system for a very old test set using MS Visual Studio and C#. I do not have a large budget so I do not want to purchase NI Measurement Studio if I don't need it. I have seen that there is some kind of wizard that lets me make a "wrapper class" in C# out of old C drivers for old instruments. My instruments are very old and do not have native C# drivers. Does it make sense to pay for NI Measurement Studio only for this function? Is there a simple way to do this without using NI Measurement Studio? I will not be using any charts, knobs, or other special controls. The GUI elements that come with MS Visual Studio are good enough for me. I will not be using any special data processing functions, the standard C# functions are enough for me.

[Basil-B]

Hi Joshxdr,

You are right about the wrapper classes in measurement studio, what we are doing is calling a C DLL with C# code.  You can create this setup manually yourself, it is just made a lot more convenient using Measurement Studio. Furthermore, you can download the Measurement Studio evaluation to see whether or not this is worth the convenience to you. 

[joshxdr]

Thanks for your reply. It turns out that on my desktop PC I have a site license that I can use to try out NI MS. It was tricky to get the C# DLL wrapper wizard to work, since I need the CVI interface file (.fp) to make the wizard work. Luckily I was able to find these after a lot of hunting. There does not seem to be a standard place for these to go when you install a non-NI driver. The NI MS has a lot of nice features, and the price is pretty cheap compared to something like LabVIEW, so I will probably go ahead and buy it.