How to manage seasrch directories for different TestStand projects and different users?

[LegalEngineer]

I am working with several others and we share some number of directories and at the same time own different directories for each projects. Problem rises when there are duplicated VI names are created by two users working on two different projects. Search path has to be manually changed to avoid loading a wrong VI. Sometimes user forgets to change and load a duplicated VI name. Is there a better way to manage th search paths?

[Matt P.]

LegalEngineer,

The search directories are stored in the TestExec.ini file found in the ..\TestStand 3.0\Cfg folder. Although, I don't know of any way to tell the sequence editor to get the search directories from a different file.

You could create a custom operator interface and build in custom search directory loading use the SearchDirectories ojbect (which you can get from the Engine object). For further info see TestStand Help - search for SearchDirectories.

In essence, you could create code to parse different files containing search directories and add them to the SearchDirectories object.

Hope that helps.

Matt P.
Application Engineer
National Instruments

[Scott_Richardson]

LegalEngineer -
Matt's comments above regarding the SearchDirectories object only apply to TestStand 3.0.

Under TestStand 2.0.1, you have to manage the settings in the config file Testexec.ini. You can also have read access to the search directories by accessing the .Data.SearchDirectories array property that is returned from Engine.ConfigFile().

Scott Richardson (NI)